Factors of marriage changing in Japan

Hi, I am Kotaro Yajiima. I researched marriage rate changing in Japan.

Recently it’s said that the number of people who want to marry is decreasing. I chose this topic because I am the one who really want to marry and have family, so I wanted to know opinion of people who don’t marry.

Here is a graph that shows marriage rate in Japan after the world war 2. The blue line is marriage rate and the red one is divorce so I only use blue line for this topic.

As you can see, right after the war, the rate is twice as much as 2007. This is because men came back from the war and people were less forced by Japanese government than they used to be. They had freedom so they could marry easier that before. There is one story, many men died in the war and the population of women became lager than that of men. So men had a lot of choices of their partners. This big marriage boom caused first baby boom in Japan, and baby boom was also happened in the U.S. by same reason. Babies born in this era grew up and became adults. They became ages of marriage and second marriage boom was happened. This is first half of 1970’, you can see in the graph. In the United States, 3^rd marriage and baby boom are happened, but in Japan, marriage boom was happened only twice, 3^rd one hasn’t happened.

From after the war to the era of 2^nd marriage boom, men had more power and rights than women do, men work outside and women keep houses and families. This time was the age of domination of men over women. So it used to be a custom to men propose to women.

 Women gradually acquired rights and social position was getting as high as men. Many lows that protect woman’s rights were made, women had been going into society.

By a low, company had to treat men and women equally, such as salary or work time or off days, women could work same as men do. They were not “house keeper” anymore.   This means women could spend more time on doing something besides house working, they became busier. Also when women have same rights or same position as men, the social trend, “domination of men over women” was gradually disappearing. This change is the biggest factor of decreasing marriage rate, I think. Women can do what they want to do, they aren’t restrained in houses.

Next, let’s see what do men and women actually think about marriage.

First, it’s said that there are 2 types of people who don’t marry. One is people who don’t want to marry, and the other is people who can’t marry.

The former is mainly women and the latter is usually men. Let’s call first type of people type A. What do men who are type A mostly worry about is money? The answer may be money. Usually it cost men 3-3.5 million yen to do things about marriage. This is pretty big expenses for men, especially young men. They don’t have so much income. This might be the biggest reason that hesitate marriage. If man decides marry his girl, he may not diffident whether he will earn enough to raise his family. Though I said, “domination of men over women” is being changed, more than half of people still say “husband earns money and wife keeps house and family.” Man has to support his family if he marries, and this makes man think “if you have to have economic power or you won’t be able to marry or you won’t make your family happy however you marry.”

On the other hand, what do women think about marriage?

 As I said, many women’s opinion is “we don’t want to marry.” Let’s call this kind of people type B. Like I explained first half of this blog, since women have had more powers and rights than before, they think they don’t lose their free time or carefreeness by marring.

 Next, let’s look at type of employment of men and women.

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Those graphs compares unmarried rate of men and women, and regular employee or contractual employee. Two red and blue lines on the left are men’s rate, and right lines are women’s rate. Red line explains contractual employee and blue line is regular employee. Please look at ages of 20’ and 30’ of both sexes. Men’s ages of 20’ and 30’, 94%-75.6% of contractual employees don’t marry. On the other hand, regular employee ages of 30’ men who don’t marry are only 30.7%, less than half of same ages of contractual employees. I say, this is a reason why many men belong to type A.

 Let’s see the graph of women. Blue line and red line are reversed. Regular employees who don’t marry are more than contractual employees who don’t marry. That is why more women are type B than men. They have steady jobs and income, also have responsibility. They can’t quite their jobs easily. One part of those women’s opinions are “we don’t have time to marry”, “we are satisfied with our life styles and jobs”, or “just too busy”.

Second, recently men who have no desire to have girlfriend or marry, that called herbivorous men have been increasing. Those men have no attraction for women, so women say that they don’t find good men. Or, some men say recent Japanese women are losing Japanese old modesty or womanliness. Men also say they don’t find good women.

Conclusion

I found that this marriage change is caused by changing of women’s power and right, systems of Japanese society, and opinion toward marriage. Many people regard marriage as a hard event. When people think if they will marry or not, people compare their benefits by marring to obstacles by marring, such as “will I earn enough?” or “I want to have a family but I don’t know if I can do both office job and house work”. I think to increase marriage rate, we have to change our life style and system of working.

Both man and woman work and earn, and both man and woman keep house. Man doesn’t have to worry about money so much and they should help each other. Also I think companies have to give maternity leave to men.

If men bear half of women’s worries such as raising child or house works, and women bear half of men’s worries such as money, people may will think that marriage is good thing.