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 was stationed in Japan for many years in the military and your friends are telling you the truth. Lucky you!
There is greater foreign demand for American men than there is for American women. Why?
Another guy telling us lots about the women he hangs with.
Sometimes I don't know which is worse: liberal women who think conservative women must all be doormats, or conservative men who think all conservative women should be doormats.
I'm amazed - several people on here say they have lived in Japan yet don't mention something that is well known about those "late-working husbands". They are most likely at one of the prostitue-filled mulit-storied hotels, where the license tags of their cars are covered up, shielding them from wives who might see their husband's car at one of them (assuming wife has a car to drive to see if "late-working hubby" is at one of them!).
Infidelity is one of the most blatant assumptions about a Japanese marriage and clearly these career women don't want to marry, not only to become maids, care for multiple parents and aged relatives in their home as well as be totally responsible for the children and the home, but also have to put up with cheating husbands.
It amazed me when I lived there, to see the number of hotels and clubs that catered to the various "needs" of married Japanese men. There is a hotel floor for every perversion and every wanton desire.
It seems to me that these career women don't want to have to give up their careers AND wind up with a husband who not only works late, doesn't help around the house but also cheats as frequently as he wants, hiding behind the "long hours stuff" demanded of Japanese workers. HAR!
One thing that most Western men also need to learn is to never date a Japanese woman, NOT ONCE, or trust me, you will never be free of her. She will chase you and demand you marry her. I worked with a Harvard graduate who, unforunately, dated a woman he met at a USN friend's wedding. When he returned to the US, after having said "Goodbye" and intending to never see her again, she moved herself to DC, took an English class and used her family's money to pursue this man, ruining a subsequent relationship he had established here with her stalking, and ultimately got what she wanted: Marriage.
The classes that US Navy personnel go through after being assigned to Japan not only include driver's license training (and that is a whole 'nother subject I'm not going into here. Ugh.) but also etiquette that includes subtle warnings about not dating a Japanese woman without understanding that "once is forever" in that woman's mind. She will see that Military person as her ticket to America, a large kitchen, an American bathroom, and a YARD for her children to play in, and TWO cars in the garage. You have no idea of the ticket to freedom that an American means to a Japanese woman, even a professional.
JenB got it right when she said, "and getting a Green Card couldn't have anything to do with it" or words to that effect. Of course it is. That Green Card and the house in America is everything.
"All of my Japanese friends have wives that are 10 to 15 years younger than they are. In Japan, the ideal marriage is one in which the husband acts the role of the father, so the wife needs to be young to accept the male dominance over them."
I suspect that in another 10-15 more years most of those marriages will have failed. And it will be the women who will become disinterested.
LOL -- you don't actually know many Asian women, do you? The "submissive" stereotype is definitely a myth. On the other hand, they don't have a big chip on their shoulder about feminism, like too many Western women.
Maybe they don't know American men like we do.....
Because (IN GENERAL), American men treat women FAR better then other men (Japanese, Russian, Islamic) treat them. Of course there are exceptions.
My wife describes herself as a Russian feminist (for russian she is); here ? She is still way over on the right compared to the typical american woman.
LOL!!
Ain't that the truth! Sometimes it is almost Talibanish in the 'women are evil, crazy and cause of all societies evils' mindset.
Well, thankyouverymuch! I think I will go slit my wrists now instead inflicting myself on the world for another second. /Heavy Sarcasm.
Like someone else said, it is a two way street and both genders have their own fair share of flaws and foibles.
Because maybe they see American men as morons who will provide them with U.S. citizenship and work while they get to spend all their money and all they have to do is stroke the ego every now and then?
I've dated women from other countries. They are more conservative, like being feminine, and a little shy. At least for a little while:)
There are plenty of quality American Women out there, if you have what it takes to interest one.
So9
I could never be confused with a 'docile' woman. I'm opinionated, head strong, stubborn and love a good fight.
Men and women should be equal...period. That goes for child rearing and working outside the home.
Let the games begin.
That's because they don't speaka the english.
So9
Because American men are selfish and have the emotional maturity of teenagers. They expect their wives to be brainless sex kittens who are as quick to orgasm as porn stars. And foreign girls fake'em better.
We demand the real thing :)
Bingo!
And to finish off the story of my friend who married the stalker - you should have seen her when she was pregnant. I have NEVER seen a woman demand more attention or require more drugs to survive a pregnancy than that one. She is bonkers. Why they ever had a second child, I'll never understand.
I have to leave this chair & logoff this PC - my back is killing me. If anyone comments to me, I'll respond later.
Y'all have fun without me.
Try again, it's not just Asian women. It's common in Russia and Eastern Europe for women there to also desire American men. American women are increasingly making demands that make them less desirable to American men, at the same time that foreign women are finding American men more desirable. There is not an equally reciprocal trend for American women and foreign men.
Many of the women who make up 57% of current college enrollment are either going to have to change their expectations about marrrying up educationally and economically, or they will be spinsters as American men take more reasonable options.
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