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
bump
LOL!!!!!
OK, good one....
Go-go!
Demon fish! Girl, you were cruisin' for trouble.
I have way too many tanks too, but it is an addiction, what can I say......Right now, I am force feeding a Pacu and fretting over the oscar. And they are my least favorites.
To me, that is the most deadly thing that can happen. Any game playing, any manipulation, anything that is the least bit not honest and the relationship is doomed. Ok, maybe just for me, but believing in fairy tales is what got me into this mess ;)
Everyone has that perspective in the abstract. They try and find the best mate they can obtain given a laundry list of criteria and priorities under the circumstances they find themselves in. Most people do not think about it explicitly like this, but subconsciously it is how we choose mates, and we are wired to have little difficulty "falling in love" when we do find a reasonable match.
Not that long ago, marriage explicitly had relatively little to do with the modern notion of romantic love and more to do with finding a good match as determined by society to a great extent and to a lesser extent personal preference, the notion being that love would come later if the match was reasonable without too much effort. Nothing has changed, but modern culture has increasingly developed this nouveau modern fairytale conception of what marriage is that almost completely ignores the underlying themes of the ages that were a part of marriage for a reason. The problem is not with love per se, but with the shallow understanding of its relationship to marriage.
When you look for a mate in a market where you will have more value, it generally follows that the mate you find will value you more. It is more complicated than just "falling in love" -- more the symptom than the "disease" -- people need to feel and be valued in a relationship for it to work. This inevitably leads to what are effectively "markets" in the search for marriage. I don't think many people view it literally in this way (including myself), but it is the dynamic of the system.
Ok, a question on the male "just be friends" bit. Isn't it possible that a girl could like and respect someone, and not see him as a marriage partner? I have a number of male acquantainces that I like and respect and enjoy spending time with, but wouldn't marry because they don't share my values. If one of them asked me on a date, how am I supposed to say "I value your company but there's no chance of 'us'" without kicking him in the junk?
I can't possibly see making a guy jump through hoops. Unless I explicitly state the hoops. "Want to marry me? Well... you're going to have to get Daddy's permission first... *bat my eyelashes innocently*". But that's a different matter, I think...
ping
Yeah, that was more or less what I was getting at, but you stated it better. (As usual!)
I don't always wear my faith on my sleeve - I don't hide it or anything, but people that I don't know through church or through something like this don't necessarily know my beliefs and values. And if someone who I know doesn't share any of the same beliefs and values asks me if I'd like to go out...and I know it's not gonna go anywhere...isn't it kinder to say something in the general vein of the "just be friends" line than it would be to lead him on?
Ugh...that makes me sound like such a snob, but hopefully makes sense.
She sort of reminds me of that "Go-Go" chick from the movie "Kill Bill."
Be afraid... Be very afraid!!!
Mark
Just a lot more expensive, and they take a lot longer to house-train!
Mark
I've got a 'thing' for her. It's very wrong. I'll bet she talks dirty--through that crooked smile....
Very wrong.
Well said, and I'm sure you want to leave it at that.
This has nothing to do with a green card.
We already had a thread on that a couple years ago and it went up to thousands of posts, I think.
of = or
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