Kokuhaku, or love confession, isn’t easy to research. People take contemporary cultural practices for granted; such practices aren’t studied until they fall out of practice. If you do a web search for kokuhaku, you will find many articles, but I aim for academic or newspaper sources. These are scarce.

In any case, like so many things in Japanese culture, romantic love has some rules and practices designed to retain harmony and reduce external conflict. Throughout anime, you see characters fret over the love confession. Will she/he share the same feelings? What if I’m rejected? She/he can’t feel the same way. The internal back and forth captures the reality of romantic love and its uncertainty. The practice of love confession seeks to clear the air, to remove the uncertainty. But rejection and its pain remains a risk. Of course, rejection has its own rules and practices designed to soften the landing.

Kokuhaku (告白) may mean love confession. Koku (告) means announcement. Haku (白) means white. So the word means “white announcement”, a reference to pure, chaste, and clear expression of feelings (Nurfitri, 2020).

Kokuhaku doesn’t depend on Valentine’s Day and White Day, but the holidays illustrate why a direct confession is important. As you likely know, Japan divides romantic gift giving into two holidays. On Valentine’s Day, February 14, women give gifts, typically chocolate, to men. On March 14, White Day, men return the favor. While the practice of giving obligatory chocolate (義理チョコ, giri choco) to male colleague is falling out of practice, it does offer a subtle way to show affection. If you give a little better chocolate or a special special chocolate to someone, you can subtly show interest in them while still avoiding social risk. After all, others are getting chocolate too.  In anime, you will often see the girl make chocolate for her interest while giving store-bought chocolate to everyone else. White Day then gives the guy a chance to reciprocate if he has mutual feelings (Morales, 2021). Both holidays were introduced in 1936 by a company targeting foreigners living in Japan, and the holidays reintroduced again in the late 1950s for everyone else (Minowa, 2011). However, Valentine’s Day allows a less risky way to test for romantic interest and empowers women to take the first step.

These holidays may end with the couple dating, but the relationship isn’t official until the love confession. In some cases, dating won’t happen until after that confession. You can see both practices in anime. In general, the “rules” suggest the love confession should happen after 3 or more dates. In anime, you will see guys confess first, but women can also take this step.

How to Confess Your Love the Japanese Way

So that brings us to the actual confession. Your success depends on many factors, but the timing and method of confession matters. Confessions over text and social media are no-goes. Confess in person. The best environment for confession, as Morales (2021) accounts, has these traits:

1. Quiet
2. Private
3. Has the right mood
4. A place for a special, shared event

Anime and common practice list ferris wheels, fancy restaurants, or while gazing at the night sky as example situations.

In anime you will often see characters lead into their attempt at a love confession (which is interrupted or backed out of to keep the will-they-won’t-they tension going) with a phrase like “There’s something I’d like to tell you…” This is a common phrase to prime the other person for a confession (Morales, 2021).

What comes next is the love confession. Multiple phrases exist for this part of the ritual. Nurfitri (2020) collected 16 phrases used to confess. The most common phrases appear in anime:

1. I love you, suki desu
2. Can we have a relationship?, tsukiatte kudasai

However, there are many other, if less common, phrases:

1. Please marry me, kekkon shite kudasai
2. Be my woman, ore no onna ni nare yo
3. Please make kakigori ice for me together, ore no kakigori o issho ni tsukutte kudasai
4. Please make delicious rice, oishii gohan o tsukutte kudasai
5. Let’s melt together, issho no torokeru na koi o shiyoo
6. I want to go with you again next year, rainen mo anata to issho ni ikitai yo
7. Let’s have a hot summer like this firework, kono hanabi no yoo ni, atsui natsu o sugosoo ze
8. I’m in love, please reciprocate, koi shitemasu, onegaishimasu
9. Please stay by my side forever, zutto tonari ni itte kudasai
10. This summer is warm, so make our relationship warm too, kono natsu wa atsui kara, oretachi mo atsu atsu ni naro ze
11. Please grow together, issho ni seichoo shitete kudasai
12. Please be my most important person, boku no ichiban taisetsu na hito shite kudasai
13. I will protect you for a lifetime, so take me, ishoo mamoru kara, ore ni tsurete koi
14. You are so cute, I want you to be my girlfriend, mecha kawaii kara, ore no kanojo ni natte hoshii

The actual words aren’t as important as the feelings behind those words. The phrases act as a touch point for those feelings. They stab into the social harmony Japanese culture favors. Love is a risk, an act of extreme vulnerability.

Acceptance and Rejection

As you can guess, there are a few phrases for this half of the confession (Morales, 2021). Acceptance is straightforward:

1. Yes, I’d like to, hai, onegaishimasu
2. I’d like to, yoroshiku onegaishimasu

Rejection has more options, gentle, direct, and blunt:

1. I appreciate the sentiment, but…,kimochi wa ureshii kedo
2. I’m sorry, gomen nasai
3. I’d like to be friends, tomodachi de itai
4. There’s someone else I like, sukina hito ga iru
5. You’re not my type, taipu ja nai
6. To be honest, I don’t like/love you, shojiki, suki de wa nai

The idea of these phrases is to provide a socially acceptable template to make an anxious, exciting act of vulnerability a little easier along with turning down such an act. Romantic anime stories revolve around this act, often to the point of never resolving the question.

The Western View

“I love you” has weight in the West that the love confession, as a gateway phrase, doesn’t exactly have. This doesn’t diminish the love confession’s importance and weight. It’s different. In the West, “I love you” comes later, deeper into a romantic relationship. The words mark a turning point in a relationship, a deepening more akin to the kokuhaku phrase “Stay by my side forever”. Although the phrase “I love you” is also common among family members: used when ending phone calls, for example. Because of this, the Japanese love confession can feel strange for Westerners who aren’t familiar with the practice. Some may feel the practice as pushy or as moving too fast.

The words can be used to manipulate and guilt. Every good phrase can be distorted to do evil, after all. Kokuhaku can be used in a similar way.

Kokuhaku provides a way to ease the difficulty of expressing your romantic emotions and making a relationship official in the gaze of society. Opening your soul to someone is risky no matter how you approach it, but it is worth the risk.

References

Nurfitri, Rizki (2020) Love Confessions in Japanese From Street Interview. International Review of Humanities Studies. Vol 5, No. 2. 663-684.

Minowa, Yuko, et al (2011) Social Change and Gendered Gift-Giving Rituals: A Historical Analysis of Valentine’s Day in Japan. Journal of Marcromarketing 31(1) 44-56.

Morales, Daniel (2021) Confess! Dating in Japan requires short set phrases to spark the fire. The Japan Times. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2021/02/12/language/valentines-japanese-dating-phrases/