This last stat is particularly alarming. The Japanese are legitimately worried about running out of Japanese people. No more ramen?? No more sushi?? No more high-end Japanese whiskeys??! You see how this is really a hot potato.
The situation has reached a point where even the government has seen the need to step in. Since 2010 the Japanese state has paid parents a monthly allowance of between $100 and $150 per child, to take some of the financial burden out of child raising. But before you can have a kid, you need to find someone to love and marry, right? Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe allocated $25 million in the 2014 fiscal budget for programs designed to get people to pair off and have babies, including government-funded dating services. An official survey conducted in 2010 showed that 66 percent of all prefecture governments and 33 percent of city/ward/town/village governments were implementing some form of marriage support. Even more do so today.10
We asked the Japanese American sociologist Kumiko Endo, who studies the new “marriage support” programs that the Japanese government has established, to give us some examples. In Niigata Prefecture, she said, “marriage support events include tours (e.g., bus tour to nearby shrine), cultural events (e.g., cooking classes), sports events, and seminars (coaching sessions for men while fishing).” Saga Prefecture has set up a Department of Connection that fixes up singles who want to meet new people, and both Shizuoka and Akita prefectures now provide Internet communication services for singles, whom they inform about various parties and events for singles, some of which are supported by the government. Finally, Fukui Prefecture recently launched an online dating site called the Fukui Marriage-Hunting Café, and couples who meet on the site and marry receive cash and gifts.
The government is sending Japanese couples wedding presents? What on earth is happening there?
Learning about this crisis—and remembering how much I was fiending for authentic ramen and all the other delights of Tokyo—it was clear I needed to hit the ground myself to find out what was happening.
Contemplating the sexual crisis in Japan while wearing a kimono in Kyoto . . .
THE HISTORY AND CURRENT STATE OF MARRIAGE IN TOKYO
Before getting into the current situation in Japan, it’s important to understand that Japan has also seen a large shift in how adults view and pursue the institution of marriage. My sociologist friend Kumiko explained to me that up until World War II, arranged marriages were more common than any other form of matrimony. Even in the 1960s approximately 70 percent of all marriages were set up by families. In the 1970s the workplace became a prime site for finding a mate. Large companies would organize social gatherings, and cultural norms dictated that most women would quit their posts after they married and started a family.11
Today, however, that system is a relic. Arranged marriages are uncommon (down to 6.2 percent as of 2005).12 Like the United States, Japan has adopted a more individualistic culture based on personal choice and happiness. The Japanese economy has been sluggish since the 1990s, and the modern workplace has become a site for stressful competition. It’s no longer acting as a de facto singles bar for professionals.
So, if the old system is now broken, what has replaced it?
HERBIVORE MEN
After arriving in Tokyo, I knew I had a limited amount of time to do what I needed to get done: visit the five best ramen shops in the city. After eating my fill of ramen, it was time to get down to business: visiting that robot restaurant, because, man, who could pass up an opportunity like that? Then duty called: I also had to visit that Bill Clinton mask/dog back-rub place. It was awesome. Then a quick nap, and finally I started doing some research for this book.
First we organized some focus groups to discuss dating in Tokyo. Dozens of young adults in their midtwenties and early thirties spoke to us (or, in most cases, spoke to Kumiko, who translated their Japanese).
Going in, one of the notions I was most curious about was the “herbivore man.” This is a term that has become ubiquitous in Japan over the past few years to describe Japanese men who are very shy and passive and show no interest in sex and romantic relationships. Surveys suggest that about 60 percent of male singles in their twenties and thirties in Japan identify themselves as herbivores.13
In the first group we held, one of the first to arrive was Akira. A good-looking young Japanese dude in a really sharp suit, Akira, thirty, looked like he was probably doing well for himself. He seemed like a successful, confident young man. This guy wasn’t an herbivore, right?