Miso soup – pizza complex
Back home, the only men I knew after leaving junior high school were my father, grandfather, uncles, and teachers, with whom I barely talked. Now I spoke to men at Waseda and Kubo and started to learn their views on women.
They separated women into two categories. At first, it sounded as vague as, “this kind of girl” and “that kind of girl.” The boy of my failed date loathed “that kind of girl” for not sleeping with his friend after finding out he was lying about his fake-med-student status (in his perspectives, she didn’t sleep with him because he was not a med-student). The salary-man who suggested the extramarital affair considered me a “separate matter.”
I often heard men justifying their infidelity by using the food metaphor. “Men love simple, light-flavored food like miso soup, but sometimes they want to eat greasy, cheezy pizza. But they can’t sustain themselves on pizza, so they always come back to miso soup (until they want pizza again).” Comparing women to food was downright disgusting. It meant that both types of women were inanimate objects with no feelings men had to consider. Also, whether they were miso soup or pizza, all women were expected to provide men what they desired. I didn’t learn the term “Madonna-whore complex” until much later, but even at the time, I sensed the dichotomy of “good girls and bad girls.” Miso soup was good, pizza was bad.