White Day ホワイト　デー

White day on March 14th is a time for men to answer their gifts of chocolates on Valentine’s Day with something white… like cookies and candies, but other white related gifts are OK, too. Remember the gift should be triple in value!

Gals Get Cookies from Guys Day

White Day on March 14th every year is the day when the chocolate given out by girls is reciprocated by the men with cookies! White day is a semi-romantic holiday where men should give back triple in value gifts from the chocolate they received on Valentine’s Day. It was created by Japan’s National Confectionary Industry Association back in 1978. Soon afterwards other East and South-East Asian countries began adopting the new holiday as well.

Why White Day?

Valentine’s Day Mistranslation

Once upon a time, in the 1950’s, chocolate makers wanted to sell a lot more chocolates on February 14th in Japan. But Valentine’s Day is a Christian celebration! So not many people in marketing understood the nature of the holiday, or understood English. So the marketing campaign they came up with was “Valentine’s day is women give men chocolate day!” They capitalized on people’s curiosity about western culture and sold a lot more chocolate from then on. However the only women give men chocolates never got corrected. Even today, with all the advanced knowledge about western cultures, it is just accepted that this is the Japanese Valentine’s day.

Men Should Reciprocate

By the mid-1970s there was a general sense that men only receiving chocolate from women and being off the hook for giving anything in return wasn’t really fair, especially amongst women. The chocolates expected to be given out by women seemed to keep increasing year after year. At first there was only True Love Chocolate (Honmei Choco), then came Obligation Chocolate (Giri Choco) for male workmates that the women appreciated, and then Really Obligation Chocolate (Cho Giri Choco) for the men that would feel singled out for not receiving chocolates, but the women actually don’t like them at all. Japanese women were feeling kind of exploited on Valentine’s day!

White Candy Makers Want Their Own Day

White day came up as a brain child of a marshmallow maker in northern Kyushu. The idea was this, men needed to give something in return for all the chocolatey goodness they were receiving. Chocolate was black, so something white was appropriate as contrast. Something white like a marshmallow! Thus in the mid-1970’s Marshmallow day on March 14th was born. It did not last. However, a year or so later a consortium of candy makers liked the basic idea, and expanded white to all their candies and marketed it as a reciprocity day for men received chocolates from women on Valentine’s day. It was named and marketed as White Day and was set one month from Valentine’s Day on March 14th.

White Day Reciprocity

White Day is a day to reciprocate receiving chocolates on Valentine’s Day. So it is not common practice for men in Japan to express love for a certain special someone by giving them a White Day gift if they didn’t first get chocolate! At first it seems the reciprocating gift was basically set at a one to one ratio, and only from the True Love Chocolate receivers. But women were giving out more and more chocolate every year to an expanding group of men and friends. So in the late 1980’s the idea came about from candy and chocolate manufacturers that men should give back three times what they initially received; all the men who received, including the Really Obligation Chocolate receivers. Today, True Love Chocolate receivers are expected to give back three times what they received in monetary value. However, the reciprocity from Obligation and Really Obligation Chocolate receivers is still close to zero. Friend Chocolates are usually exchanged on Valentine’s Day, so reciprocation is usually immediate on that day.