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I lived there for 9 mos. in 2002-3. To meet more Japanese I joined a badminton group that had several foreign members. Some people just liked to meet and socialize with foreigners, but I was surprised how frank many women were about wanting to marry a Westerner. (I was already married so I probably was able to get a more honest take.)

I am going to Japan for 2 weeks of speaking engagements in February. All of my Japanese friends (all men from age 40 to 65) have warned me that young Japanese women will throw themselves at me because there really is a shortage of men willing to marry. I thought they were joking, but they were very serious and I have heard the same thing from over a dozen people so far.

I met my wife while attending the University of Washington during the 1970's on a military scholarship. She was a friend of a fellow military student's wife and had attended the same college with her in Japan. They were both from middle class Japanese families and had observed close-up the roles and relationships between men and women in "traditional" marriages. Both had been completely soured on the idea of marrying a Japanese man exactly for the reasons stated in the article.

However, it's hard to see how Japan's society and Japanese men could change quickly enough to meet the complaints of these women. It has taken the West a couple hundred years and the process is still not finished. (Plenty of Neanderthals still out there.)

FWIW, it was my second marriage, so I was a bit more realistic about my shortcomings and more reasonable in my expectations. I think it also helped that she had had the opportunity to work, to live an independent life and to see the world in the time between college and marrying. This has helped her be a much more interesting partner in our years together. (27 in the Spring.)