"FREEEEEEDOOOOMMMM!!!!!!"
Posted on 12/06/2004 9:12:18 AM PST by MississippiMasterpiece
TOKYO – The Japanese government wants women like Taeko Mizuguchi to get married and start doing something about the nation's plunging birthrate. But she's not interested.
At least, not if her prospective husband is Japanese.
A growing number of Japanese women are giving up on their male counterparts, and taking a gamble that looking abroad for love will bring them the qualities in a partner that seem rare at home. Mr. Right, as the hope goes, is often an American or European, a man appreciative of a wife's career and more of a partner in daily tasks.
"They treat you like equals, and they don't hesitate to express mutual feelings of respect - I think Western men are more adept [at such things] than Japanese men," says the 36-year-old Ms. Mizuguchi, who works at a top trading firm. "They don't act like women are maids - I think they view women as individuals."
Underscoring that Japanese women are losing hope with the local boys, dating agencies to help snag a Western husband have sprung up in Tokyo, some with branches in the US and Europe. Such companies rigorously vet their clients, screening for education, family background, occupation, and life goals.
The kind of women who sign up for such services include doctors, lawyers, and other professionals - women who have delayed marriage to concentrate on careers and who aren't keen to give up hard won gains to become a housewife, as many Japanese men expect.
Japanese women have come to consider traditional marriage roles as "disadvantageous in terms of time resources - they have to carry the burden of domestic chores as well as lose their free time," says Chizuko Ueno, a professor of sociology at Tokyo University.
Normally, married Japanese women have not only to look after their own parents during old age, but also to care for their parents-in-law. When it comes to raising kids, "they can't expect much cooperation from their partner" because of the long work hours required at many Japanese corporations and because of established gender roles that assume that the woman does the child-rearing, Ms. Ueno adds.
A generation of women who are now entering their 30s don't want to give up single life unless prospective partners are willing to break from traditional gender roles.
Government polls conducted to find out why women have put off marriage until well after 25 years of age - known as a woman's " 'best before' date" - show that economic independence is key to the change. As most Japanese women have their own income, marriage is no longer a financial necessity and women want to find companionship in a husband.
That is where Japanese men have come up short. There is "a wide gap in men's and women's attitudes and expectations toward marriage" vis-à-vis traditional gender roles, says Sumiko Iwao, professor of social psychology at Musashi Institute of Technology in Yokohama. For instance, coming home later than your Japanese husband is a no-no.
Having ruled out an old-fashioned Japanese husband, many women here think the solution is a Western man. Indeed, some seem so enthralled with the idea that they are willing to spend thousands of dollars to inspect the wares personally. Of the more than 2,000 women on the books at one large matchmaking agency, about 200 travel to the US or Europe each month to meet prospects.
Sentimental projections have recently been extended to Korean men also, due to romantic Korean soap operas.
In 2003, Japanese women marrying American or British men outnumbered Japanese men marrying American or British women by 8 to 1. The total proportion of Japanese marrying foreigners each year has crept up from around 3.5 percent in 1995 to just over 5 percent. Japanese men are actually more than three times as likely as the women to take a foreign spouse, but this is mostly rural men marrying less well-off Chinese and Filipino women. "Such cases are elderly farmers not popular among young Japanese women," says Yuriko Hashimoto, a local government employee in the remote northern prefecture of Iwate.
To be fair, not all the blame for female angst here can be laid on Japanese men. The government has been slow to enforce equal opportunity laws, and both pay and the glass ceiling in most Japanese corporations remain low for women. Recession has hampered longer maternity leave and other family-friendly policies.
As Japan's fertility rate drops to new lows - at last count it was 1.29, well below levels required for population replacement - the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is anxiously drawing up plans to make it easier for young couples to raise children, through such measures as the provision of cheap public housing.
Mixed marriages in Japan
Japanese men marry: Chinese 10,242 Filipinos 7,794 Koreans 2,235 Americans 156 British 65
Japanese women marry: Koreans 5,318 Americans 1,529 Chinese 890 British 334 Filipinos 117
Source: 2003 Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare
I love it when two broken people can find each other... It warms my heart.
Why have I had good luck with that when being 'nice' and 'supportive' and 'sharing' didn't work at all?
*sprays with lysol*
LOL!
OK, yes, I confess. I'm a fool for humor. :-)
It depends....
What'll you do for me?
On the feminine side of her, she cooks as good, if not better than I do. But please, never ever ask her to wash a dish. Washing dishes, she refuses to do.
I actually understand very well. I made generalizations about American men and women, and you and a few others took those generalizations personally. If generalizations don't apply to you, then don't worry about them.
But I don't overgeneralize, that would diminish him.
That's not how generalizations work. Generalizations are not specific.
He isn't the one on here berating American women, you are.
LOL, I made a negative generalization, and rather than refute the generalization as a generalization, you've internalized it and personalized it. I don't know you and have no idea if any of the generalization would apply to you.
There are cultural phenomena at work, and it takes generalizations to discuss and undestand them. By their nature, cultural phenomena are general.
Do you really assume that there's not any applicable negative generalization about American women that might be a factor in these phenomena?
What? Shooting ain't a gender role crossing in my book. I consider it a requirement! I don't want a woman that is helpless when I am not there. If she knows firearms and/or kung-fu, so much the better.
Avoiding American women and looking for wives overseas is like riding a bicycle with training wheels. Their different upbringing may make the initial stages of the courtship and marriage easier for a man who doesn't know what he is doing, but the relationship will eventually fail badly if he doesn't start advancing and growing himself - because she will rapidly adapt to American life and start holding him to the same standards American women would.
American men should stop looking for shortcuts. There really aren't any. ;)
Fried catfish...yum
It depends....
What'll you do for me?
How about give ya a hand-up outta the hole? >:>
Hey! Maids ARE individuals, Einstein! :-)
That is just it. While 'going to church' is great advice for finding a place with good women, it does not necessarily put you in a setting to trying to court them.
Yet that is your fantasy.
By being a 'nice guy', a man cannot satisfy that elusive 'fantasy' part and a woman will discard him.
Now get William Wallace a nice ale out of the 'fridge, won't you?
LOL! Yep, this is a great place to meet good conservative gals...but still we have a lot of these threads.
And I show up...dunno why. Guess it's the train wreck factor.
Ah Mel... be still my heart. I was a young teenager when Mad Max was out and I remember some girlfriends were all agog over him. I wasn't then but I swear, even then I said "talk to me in 15 or 20 years, he'll improve." Oh my, has he ever...
His point is to act like the stud who can get the cheap desperate women into bed. Great.... That is what those women think they want too. For a couple hours, they feel wanted.
But I don't want to hear him whine about how he isn't meeting any quality women this way.
So, why do women, in general, respond so well to being treated badly?
I get you,dmz! Didn't take a lot of effort, now did it?
You be the man!!! (have you run out of stores yet??)Lol!
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