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MORE "MUSH" JOURNALISM ON JAPAN
BY THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
DECEMBER 6, 2004

Entitled, "What Japanese women want: a Western husband", you gotta raise an eyebrow when the assertions made in the article are not even supported by the statistical evidence it provides...

My comment follows at the end:

ARTICLE BEGINS
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WHAT JAPANESE WOMEN WANT--A WESTERN HUSBAND
By Bennett Richardson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
December 6, 2004
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1206/p01s04-woap.html?s=u

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-a-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.
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Mixed marriages in Japan (from CSM article)

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
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ARTICLE ENDS

MY COMMENT: "What Japanese women want: a Western husband"--from the very title, I saw it as an old rehash of the, "Japanese women far prefer Western men, on balance, to the domestic slag".

Even though the statistics above, if you pull them apart, note that around 93% of the international marriages in Japan (of those listed--there are many countries not mentioned. The CSM has not even bothered to include an "remaining nationalities" column to give us the grand total) are to Asians, such as Koreans and Chinese. And of J women to F Asians, 72% of all mentioned. Thus the article's focus is on a minority trend indeed.

The article even brought up the old, long-since forgotten optimal marriagable age of 25 (ask people under thirty nowadays if they know "Christmas Cake" in conjugal terms--most, to my surprise, don't!). Out of touch.

Moreover the focus on Japanese women (despite the 2003 stats showing that they account for only 30% of the international marriage total mentioned) plays into the old hackneyed accounts of Japanese women seeking comfort outside Japan--complete with tired statements about unhelpful Japanese men (wheel in obscure (female) Japanese sociologist or rural government bureaucrat of unknown position to back up the reporter's claims). The clear majority of international marriages, even though they are J men to F women, are merely something, the article insinuates, that the country bumpkins do--to the less-well-off non-White foreigners. As if that doesn't count. This attitude is patently offensive.

About time that the Western reporters realize they truly are marginal players in Japan's big foreigner pool (of the nearly 2 million registered foreigners in Japan, only around 100,000 are, for example, Americans--and more than half of those are active-duty US military and their unregistered dependants consigned to bases). There are more South Americans in Japan now than Americans or Europeans. At least try to update your stereotypes.

Thus warm-fuzzy articles like these, although good for massaging some indelible self-importance of Westerners in Japan, hardly capture the big picture of what's going on here. Shows how journalists are still not getting it right about Japan. Quality control in reportage, please.

Arudou Debito in Sapporo
debito@debito.org
http://www.debito.org
December 10, 2004