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The story
An article went viral after a research firm specializing in teens surveyed 500 current high schoolers about their attitudes toward “ojisan” (middle-aged men) appearance and behavior — things like leg hair, wiping their faces with an oshibori (hot towel), and dressing younger than their age — and found that many respondents said they simply didn’t care. On 5ch, opinions split between those who saw it as “not tolerance, just plain indifference” and others debating generational differences in values.
◼What 500 High Schoolers Said: “Bothered” or “Not Bothered”?
Men’s looks and behavior tend to spark debate every summer. So what do Reiwa-era young people actually think? Wakamono Research, a research firm specializing in teens and current high schoolers, conducted a survey on attitudes toward “ojisan” looks and behavior — and it revealed young people’s real, honest opinions.
The survey was conducted online in June 2026, targeting current high schoolers (male and female) nationwide, with 500 valid responses collected in total.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Young guys these days get their leg hair removed anyway,
and Reiwa-era high schoolers' parents don't even have the habit of wiping their faces with an oshibori (hot towel) anymore.
Not everyone's like that, come on.
Sounds like someone who watches way too much TV lol
They're not even on the radar.
It's the old ladies who are the ones complaining.
Exactly.
To Gen Z, for whom men's makeup is totally normal, the Showa generation must look like they're from another planet.
Still, I do think kids these days are genuinely kind.
The Yutori ("relaxed education") and Satori ("enlightened/low-desire") generations, meanwhile, are vain AND scarily hateful toward others.
I think it's less tolerance, more just not being interested.
Honestly, I have to agree with this one.
That's the generation that grew up watching the Employment Ice Age generation struggle, and was drilled by parents and teachers from childhood to always come out on top.
I hear they don't even go through a rebellious phase.
That's because the parent generation changed.
Forcing their own values on their kids, that intolerant "it has to be this way" attitude — the Yutori-generation parents have way less of that compared to before.
Most people feel this way, but sites play up a noisy minority as if it were public opinion just to farm engagement.
Cunningham's Law in action.
Middle and high schoolers these days really don't seem to be at odds with their parents — even daughters get along fine with their dads.
Maybe the rebellious phase isn't some universal human thing after all.
When I was young it was normal to say "don't wash my clothes together with Dad's," but my daughter doesn't care at all.
She's like "once it's washed it's all the same anyway" lol.
Pretty dry personality lol
That age group is still tolerant, honestly.
It's the 40s-to-60s crowd — especially those around 55 who graduated right at the tail end of the bubble economy — who are the scary ones.
Still stuck in the Showa era.
That's because fathers are actually involved in child-rearing now.
More time spent with the kids naturally means getting along better.
and now even the grandpas are starting to wear them.
Grandpa, shorts are totally normal in hot countries, you know?
These days even civil servants are allowed to wear shorts on the job.
Japan's basically tropical now.
Maybe it's the smell that bothers people?
Body odor, scalp odor, behind the ears, and age-related odor all blended together with an overpowering, pricey cologne on top.
I only wear cologne occasionally — Jardin de Nil — but I shower every day,
so any age-related odor from my scalp or neck should be kept in check.
You mean the losers of the Employment Ice Age generation?
Those guys kept insisting marriage is "the grave of life."
Bottom-tier types who never marry or have kids are just a burden on society.
That's only the uptight, easily-irritated women.
It's a difference in emotional bandwidth.
To young people, middle-aged men are just a "eh, whatever, not my problem" kind of thing.
kind of like when I think "well, that's just something grandpa and grandma who can't even use a smartphone would do."
Old folks these days are all pretty good at handling smartphones and computers.
Background and Key Points
I’ll write the closing commentary for this article.
Wakamono Research surveyed 500 current Japanese high schoolers in June 2026 about “ojisan” (middle-aged men) traits — leg hair, wiping faces with an oshibori, dressing younger than their age — and found widespread indifference rather than either approval or disgust. The oshibori detail matters for non-Japanese readers: it’s a hot or cold towel handed out at restaurants and izakaya before a meal, traditionally used only for the hands, and using it to wipe one’s face or neck has long been coded as an unrefined “ojisan” habit in Japanese etiquette discourse. The survey’s framing taps into a recurring Japanese media trope — “ojisan-kusai” (smelling/acting like a middle-aged man) — that has fueled seasonal listicles for years, especially around summer, when body odor and appearance complaints spike.
The 5ch thread didn’t split over whether high schoolers are tolerant; nearly every poster agreed the finding was really apathy, not kindness. The actual disagreement was about who is generational villain: some blamed the Employment Ice Age generation (people now in their 40s-50s who struggled to find stable jobs after the bubble burst) for being harsh critics, while others pointed specifically at bubble-era graduates around 55, or at women over 50, as the real source of anti-ojisan sentiment.
What the thread never addresses is the survey’s methodology or sample framing — it’s unclear how “tolerance” was operationalized, whether respondents were shown images or just asked abstractly, and whether a research firm marketing itself around “youth insights” has incentive to produce shareable, generation-gap-flattering headlines rather than rigorous findings.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread: “Reiwa High Schoolers Are Shockingly Tolerant of ‘Ojisan’?? What the Survey on Leg Hair, Face Towels, and Dressing Young Reveals About Young People’s ‘Kindness’”.
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