Just doing my part.
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
Fair enough and I think it's perfectly obvious that there are plenty of women out there who are looking for an American husband mostly to escape their own wretched countries. Like western Europeans however I don't think the Japanese are ussually in that group.
I recently have, unfortunately, a low opinion of foreigners in general. Not just women. It stems from their opinion of Americans.
If you want fresh vegetables, go to a farmers market.
If you want good cuts of meat, go to a butcher.
If you want to meet good people.......
It's not, "working the church", it's putting yourself in a place where there are more people you MIGHT want to get to know better and, possibly, finding a mate in one of them.
What, you mean like this site? C'mon, I'm sure the guys who go here for women are just hardworking, fabulous men who despite all their charms and success can't attract an American woman because she's nothing but an ungrateful bitch.
Be sure not to miss the customized search by age, height, and weight. The "Sex Bomb" theme song is a nice touch, too.
Is it? How so? I would think that with the huge potpourri that is the English language, one could talk about nearly everything without making generalizations.
Can I get a "meow?"
I jotted down these post numbers and went back and read every one of them. Thank you!
Do you? You just made a generalization.
I don't usually get into these "war of the sexes" threads. I've been married 28 years to the same glorious woman, who is the light of my life. But I do want to clarify the way these back and forths seems to go as I read them.
The men here are responding to the "media woman," a created Hollywood/New York style uppity thing they are constantly bombarded with on television and at the movies. Only a complete slug would have an interest in this type of woman. They want it their way all the time, and want the men to be metrosexual girly-men, whom they can slap down with their cleverness, verbal assaults and wit.
The women here are responding to the men's lack of warmth and tolerance for this "media woman." I don't think we are describing anything but stereotyped versions of our own prejudices. Then people start piling on with insults built on every unsatisfactory episode in our lives that have involved the opposite sex. We have all met boors. That doesn't make evryone like that.
My sons both picked delightful girls and my daughters got a couple of winning young fellows after a couple of bumpy relationships. The trick was none of them were that hard to please. Yet everyone of them would now be considered a part of a handsome,attractive couple. My experience, based on my grown kids, is that the men are a bit harder to sift through for young women of quality. There are a lot of buzzards out there, a lot of liars and scoundrels, and women are drawn to bad boys for whatever reason when they are young.
There are also many fine young men who can't even get a look. My sons couldn't get a date in high school and early college because the girls had their sights set so high, either on looks or money. Both my boys are good, tall, average to handsome fellows and somewhat shy. It was mostly financial...the woman who loved them would not have it cushy at the beginning. Their ladies had to have careers for them to make it. I had the same problem during high school. I was middle class and running with the rich jocks because I had a good paying job. The girls ignored me. So me and my boys fell in love with the very first girl who took us as we were and loved us back, and so far we have all never needed to look again.
I do find it amusing that in "family" oriented TV, an old goat man with a bald head and a paunch always has a beautiful young wife. Television doesn't reflect reality any better in family programming than in the junk (my opinion) like "Friends" and "Sex in the City". But the stuff on those shows and the male inferiority portrayed there is the stereotype that makes many of us fellows blood boil.
As for the feminist man haters or Jennifer Anniston clones the men here are describing, that speaks for itself. Either side demanding too much of the other will be quite lonely. Many men see themselves as giving up a ton of power over the last forty years, and they are saying "enough" at least to being the whipping boys portrayed in these popular media shows. We are men, period. Ladies, love us for what we are and most of us will gladly reciprocate.
LOL.
It was the Food Lion story that did it for you, wasn't it? You can admit it.
However, your plan, "When all else fails, accuse them of jealousy". Pffftt... save it.
Please, not another, "say what you want, as long as it sounds like my opinion thread, is it"?
You misunderstand.... We are asking very specifically about you, because you are the one telling us that we are, as a class, inappreciative of you and ungrateful. I want to know what you brought with you to the table, besides some idea that women have it pretty good in this country. That isn't yours to give.
I appreciate and am grateful for my husband. But I don't overgeneralize, that would diminish him. He isn't the one on here berating American women, you are.
That was a small part of it. One thing to have the love fade, one thing to feel used and unappreciated, one thing to get your knickers in a twist over the usual marriage me/you stuff---those are things that healthy people with healthy minds can fix. But it is another thing to realize you have married someone mentally unstable, insanely manipulative and very dangerous. Evil isn't over the top here. That isn't 'fixable'.
I have a couple old cast iron skillets, they are more mine than my wife's, though she likes them too...for frying fish, nothing beats a well seasoned cast iron skillet.
No, I didn't. I offered an opinion based on knowledge (e.g., the English language has more words than any other) and reason.
Now please tell me why it is you can't discuss a cultural phenomenon without making generalizations.
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