The 'First' Menstrual Pain Experience in Toyama Prefecture | At a High School [High school students and local residents mingle to experience menstrual pain together]

The other day, we held a menstrual pain experience session at a private high school in Toyama Prefecture.
Even looking at Toyama Prefecture as a whole, this was the first time a menstrual pain experience had been held within the prefecture—and although it was held at a high school, it became an opportunity that garnered attention, with local residents and local media also coming to attend.

Using a menstrual pain experience kit developed at Kanazawa University

The menstrual pain experience kit was developed by Kanazawa University students in their fourth year, led by Nami Oda from the Youth Health Room, with whom we have been conducting sex education activities for some time. This menstrual pain experience kit uses EMS (Electrical Muscle Stimulation) to send electrical signals to the muscles, reproducing the pain felt when the uterus contracts. Low-frequency electrical stimulation can reproduce pain that is close to the deep, throbbing pain of menstrual cramps.

School teachers, who had been curious about the menstrual pain experience for some time, finally held it

The high school we visited this time has very unique classes. Rather than classes for entrance exams where students sit at desks and listen to lectures, they place importance on learning through experience and practice.
For example, in classes like "Business Design," students utilize local resources such as local ingredients to develop and sell products. Furthermore, I was told that the products created here are not just sold for a single year, but have been sold for over five years, growing into products loved by the community.

This time, we held the menstrual pain experience as one of their unique experiential classes.
Although it was a class, we made it so that only those who wished to participate could do so after school. (Since there are people who do not want to feel pain, we believe that an opt-in format is preferable to a mandatory one for everyone.)

I heard that it was after school during the test period, but about 40 students from all three grades, both male and female, participated.
Also, since this was the first time a menstrual pain experience was held in Toyama Prefecture, the school invited local residents, and about 10 people participated, bringing the total number of participants to 50.

Doesn't the sight of high school students and local residents mingling to experience menstrual pain sound a bit interesting just imagining it?

Situations where having menstrual pain is a problem in daily life, revealed through the experience

Regardless of grade level, the male-to-female ratio was 50:50, and students were interested across the board, but since the menstrual pain experience was optional, I was very curious about the reasons for participating for the students who were there.

What I was particularly curious about was a group of about 6 male students who looked a bit flashy and caught my eye first when I looked around the venue. It is not good to judge or label people by their appearance, but I felt that they were somehow the center of the class and sometimes a bit too mischievous.Why were they interested?

"My girlfriend said her menstrual pain was bad, so I was curious and participated."
"I thought it would be cool to know about it when I get a girlfriend."
"I was a little curious because you can't really have this kind of experience often."

The boys who said it was for their girlfriends were very cute and wonderful!!
Deepening your understanding of someone you like or someone important to you is truly wonderful!

Since this was an experiential class, the students were frantically taking notes on what they learned for the first time and what they understood through the experience in order to submit a report after the session. When I shared and looked at the contents of their notes later,

they were writing things like, "It's tough to do P.E. with this pain," and "It's a problem when sleeping with this pain," imagining situations where having menstrual pain would be a problem in their daily and school lives.

We often say "put yourself in the other person's shoes" when trying to understand someone, but I think there are parts that you just can't see by only trying to put yourself in their shoes. I think they were able to learn about the other person's position and situation, which is revealed through having an experience like this.

An opportunity for local residents and high school students to mingle and understand the modern social issue of "menstruation-related challenges"

The biggest feature of this event was "local residents and high school students mingling together".
A little while ago (in the Heisei era and before), would local residents and high school students have gathered with the theme of "menstruation"?

This space itself had become a very fresh environment.

"Menstruation-related challenges" are said to be a modern social issue. This is because it is said that 150 years ago (the Meiji era), women experienced about 50 periods in their lifetime, whereas modern women experience about 450, meaning modern women experience about 9 times as many periods in their lifetime than they did in the past.

This is said to be due to the decrease in the number of pregnancies and childbirths over a woman's lifetime, as well as changes in lifestyles and eating habits, but a ninefold increase is surprising, isn't it? It's no wonder that the probability of women facing issues related to menstruation would also increase.
Furthermore, in this era of women's empowerment, it is easy to imagine that women who have entered the workforce face various challenges within a social system that has traditionally been based on men.
Over the past 150 years, women have changed both physically and in terms of the social environment surrounding them.

That is precisely why,as people living in these rapidly changing times, we want to understand the issues surrounding menstruation.
This is something that not only children like high school students, but also adults, including parents and local residents, should know.
Beyond just thinking, 'Menstrual pain seems painful, and it might be a more frequent topic of conversation lately,' by learning a little about the current state of menstrual issues (social problems), wouldn't our perspective and attitude toward the menstrual pain experience change as well?

An opportunity for local residents and high school students to exchange opinions and talk about social issues. It is a very valuable time.

Recently, most of the inquiries I receive about the menstrual pain experience are from rural areas, and I feel that the high volume of voices from these regions is a notable characteristic. As someone who grew up in a mountainous region of Hyogo Prefecture where traditional values still remain, I have felt the 'sense of stagnation regarding sexuality' and 'male chauvinism' unique to rural areas painfully since I was a child.

Therefore, because I receive so many inquiries from rural areas, I feel personally very happy and believe there is great significance in conducting these sessions, as I think we can change the 'sense of stagnation regarding sexuality' unique to these areas, even if only a little, by providing opportunities to acquire correct knowledge.

I would like to continue holding menstrual pain experiences across Japan in the future.
We can hold these at various opportunities such as local events, corporate training, and educational institutions, so please feel free to contact us!

Contact:cplus.cosmos@gmail.com

※ Photos are not posted due to personal information concerns.