Japanese women are dropping marriage, but cultural norms fail to catch up

The bride wore a birthday cake of a dress, with a scalloped-edge bodice and a large hoop skirt. A veil sprouted from her black bob. Moments before the wedding began, she stood quietly on a staircase, waiting to descend to the ceremony.
 
“Wow,” she thought. “I’m really doing this.”
 
This was no conventional wedding to join two people in matrimony. Instead, a group of nearly 30 friends gathered in a banquet room in one of Tokyo’s most fashionable districts last year to witness Sanae Hanaoka, 31, as she performed a public declaration of her love — for her single self.

 

“I wanted to figure out how to live on my own,” Hanaoka told the group, standing alone on a stage as she thanked them for attending her solo wedding. “I want to rely on my own strength.”
 
Not so long ago, Japanese women who remained unmarried after the age of 25 were referred to as “Christmas cake,” a slur comparing them to old holiday pastries that cannot be sold after December 25.
 
Today, such outright insults have faded as a growing number of Japanese women are postponing or forgoing marriage, rejecting the traditional path that leads to what many now regard as a life of domestic drudgery.

 
The percentage of women who work in Japan is higher than ever, yet cultural norms have not caught up: Japanese wives and mothers are still typically expected to bear the brunt of the housework, child care and help for their aging relatives, a factor that stymies many of their careers.
 
Fed up with the double standard, Japanese women are increasingly opting out of marriage altogether, focusing on their work and newfound freedoms, but also alarming politicians preoccupied with trying to reverse Japan’s declining population.
 
As recently as the mid-1990s, only one in 20 women in Japan had never been married by the time they turned 50, according to government census figures. But by 2015, the most recent year for which statistics are available, that had changed drastically, with one in seven women remaining unmarried by that age.

 
And for women aged 35 to 39, the percentage was even higher: Nearly a quarter had never been married, compared with only about 10 percent two decades earlier.
 
The change is so striking that a growing number of businesses now cater to singles, and to single women in particular. There are single karaoke salons featuring women-only zones, restaurants designed for solo diners, and apartment complexes that target women looking to buy or rent homes on their own. Travel companies book tours for single women, and photo studios offer sessions in which women can don wedding dresses and pose for solo bridal portraits.

 
“I thought, ‘If I get married, I will just have to do more housework,’” said Kayoko Masuda, 49, a single cartoonist who stopped by to croon in private at a One Kara solo karaoke salon in Tokyo. A separate section is cordoned off for women, behind sliding doors marked “Ladies Only.”
 
Last year, the number of couples getting married hit the lowest level since the end of World War II, according to government estimates. It was the sixth straight year of decline in the nation’s marriage rate, which is falling at a much faster clip than the drop in Japan’s population over all.

 
Not surprisingly, the number of births in Japan — a country where few people have children out of wedlock — is also tumbling. Last year, the number of babies born in the country fell to the lowest level since at least 1899, when record-keeping began.
 
Local governments, eager to encourage marriage and raise fertility, have started campaigns to bring couples together. “We are working on fostering a mind for marriage,” reads an ad for matchmaking tours and seminars for singles sponsored by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
 
But for more and more Japanese women — who have traditionally been circumscribed by their relationships with men, children and other family members — singlehood represents a form of liberation.

 
“When they marry, they have to give up so many things,” said Mari Miura, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo, “so many freedoms and so much independence.”
 
The shift is tied to the changing Japanese work force. Close to 70 percent of women aged 15 to 64 now have jobs — a record. But their careers are often held back by a relentless tide of domestic burdens, like filling out the meticulous daily logs required by their children’s day-care centres, preparing the intricate meals often expected of Japanese women, supervising and signing off on homework from school and after school tutoring sessions, or hanging rounds of laundry — because few households have electric dryers.

 
 
© 2019 The New York Times News Service