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'm not bored, and I'm not cranky.
I'm at work trying to keep up, but I'm still here.
Actually I was...it's happened a few times and been a shock.
For the most part, I do agree with the rest of what you've said. The downside? As a conservative woman, I feel kinda like I should let the guys do the pursuing. So there's that. Once the relationship is underway...you're probably right in that the woman has something of an upper hand. when it comes to ending things.
Heh...last time someone asked I didn't use quite those words...he wasn't even a really close friend. But I did say a buncha garbage, I admit. I didn't know what else to say! I was flabbergasted!
She'll never be president. Too many skeletons in her closet.
If she thinks she can nab conservatives with that, they were shallow to begin with. I thought we were supposed to think for ourselves.
Every one of them is all over the morality and God thing. The same folks that have been tearing down everything moral and good in America, and treating Christians like second-class citizens in their own damn country.
But Heels, if the base got turned out to vote against Kerry, they're going to sacrifice food in order to devote more time to defeat the Hildabeest. She and Bill are one thing that unite the HELL out of conservatives.
I don't want her anywhere near the Whitehouse. She's worse than Kerry would've been. Her past is almost as radical or more so than Kerry's.
Don't take this the wrong way... as a female poster on FR who the heck is Hiroko Anzai?
Amen to that.
THANK YOU!!!!
*I tried with a pic of Anna Nakagawa*
Oh, I agree! Completely! You're very right.
This wasn't that sort of situation at all. Just a friend who I play music with, but who would never, ever, ever be anything more...for lots of reasons I don't want to go into.
I think Ken is more right on this one. Letting the guy pursue is all well and good but some of the best ones will not make a move unless they see signals.
I know! ;-) Just pointing out that the more cantankerous types seem to have left us...for the moment anyway.
I think the Admins gave 'em a stern warning.
Amen. I'm right beside ya.
But, now days a girl can be thrown in jail for kicking a fella in his junk. I go with the 'we can still be friends'.
Yes. It was starting to get pretty nasty in here for a while.
Some folks just get too uptight sometimes.
Not me, though. I'm too busy gloating!
MUWAAHAHAHAAAA!!!
Yeah you are.
Will one do? I'm supposed to be working here. :-) How about this: "In 2002, 1.5% of all native-born Japanese women between the ages of 18 and 25 married a native-born American man, an increase of 87% over the previous year."
I take it that's a projection over the whole population based on a statistical sample. Ergo, a generalization.
Next!
The whole complaint with generalizations is rather sophomoric. Generalizations are useful and often necessary tools in discourse. They aren't inherently bad, they're only bad if they're incorrect.
Generalizations are about sets, not specifics. A problem can arise if folks assume a generalization about a set is necessarily applicable to any member of that set; that's stereotyping. Stereotyping is not useful, but that doesn't mean that the utility of generalizations should be ignored.
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