At Korean class last week, our teacher asked classmate Y whether she wants to get married. The exact conversation went like this:
Teacher: Do you want to get married?
Y: I want to quit my job.
If you think there’s a lack of cooperation in the discourse above, you’re not alone.
I probed, “She just asked if you want to get married and your answer is you want to quit your job?” And Y responded, “Yes, I want to get married because I don’t want to work anymore.”
This has been a very intriguing mindset among many Japanese women I’ve met. I believe the general idea of getting married is if you fall in love with someone and decide you want to be with that person for life; that you want to be a part of each others’ lives, and so you get married. However. the concept of marriage in Japan appears to be to choose someone you don’t dislike enough to want them out of your life, so that they can sustain your lifestyle without you having to work.
This idea of marriage is very common among the many people I know. To them, getting married itself is the goal; not leading a blissful life with someone you love. The difference is, getting married can possibly be attained very early in life, while the goal of leading a blissful life lasts as long as one is alive.
This way of thinking probably explains why divorce rate in Japan is relatively high. About 1 in 3 marriages end in divorce placing the country 6th in the world for the highest number of divorces and number 1 in Asia at 1.77 divorce cases per 1,000 people.
Marriage has never been and should never be the goal because then, when you achieve it, all motivation to do anything to make the marriage work is gone. It’s as with athletes who cross the finish line and see no reason to continue running. Worse, they slow their pace when the goal is right in front of them. If anything, marriage should be a process to achieve the life goal of being with someone you love. It’s a never-ending pursuit of happiness, like a bicycle-powered generator—you work hard at pedaling to create enough power to the bulb and when you get there, you have to continue pedaling to maintain the power. Setting marriage as a goal is probably also why many Japanese people find their partners changing drastically after marriage. Truth is, they didn’t change after marriage; they changed before marriage and returned to who they were after since their goal has been achieved.
Divorced cosmetic surgeon and TV personality Nishikawa Ayako said she lived with her then boyfriend before they got married and since she loves Thai food, they had Thai food together a few times a week. But as soon as they got married, the now ex-husband told her, “I hate coriander,” and they never went for Thai food together again. This happened because the ex-husband saw marrying her as a goal instead of giving her lifetime happiness as one.
To be honest, after having dated a number of Japanese women, I’ve begun thinking I prefer dating non-Japanese. I still do think the Japanese are beautiful and attractive in their right, but I’d rather be with someone real than a Kinder Surprise not knowing what I’ll get till I crack the egg open.
I think one of the reasons for this is also because of the gender inequality in Japan. Unlike Singapore, there is not a lot of social mobility for women; they are typically given contractual roles and not a lot of opportunities to move up in a company. If I know that no matter how much effort and time I put into my career, I still wouldn’t be recognized due to the sole reason of me being a woman, then it perhaps make sense to not work at all and rely on a man instead.
I mean, Japanese work culture is not a joke. There are a tons of black companies and overtime is mostly unpaid. If I had to squeeze onto a packed train worse than our MRTs every day and see myself without much of a future in the company I am working for, hey, it sounds better to have a child where you can sit by the playground, relax and avoid work and all the job insecurities that comes with it. Women in Japan hold their husband’s paychecks, after all.
I suppose depending on what you are looking for, it is pretty difficult to find an intellectually equal women in Japan. Women here often have to downplay their intelligence and act stupid/dumb so that the guys won’t be intimidated by them, I don’t know why, but I think this is an East Asian thing where guys feel like they have to be the superior ones. I am sure they exists in a country of 130 million people, but, they are probably not your ‘average’ Japanese, i.e having lived abroad/fluent in English.
You mentioned you worked in Google before right, how were the Japanese women there? Google has a unique culture of encouraging its employees to challenge the status quo and innovate so maybe the people working there are different.
That’s a very good point. Interestingly though, Y is a permanent staff and has been given more and more responsibilities at the company because she is good at what she does. But she doesn’t want to be promoted and keeps trying to push away the opportunities.
I can’t speak for all the people at the company since I only met a handful of the huge corporation, but as my team is largely made up of either foreigners or Japanese people raised overseas, it was interesting to hear one comment from a girl K, who attended training sessions with a bunch of other mainly Japan-raised staff. When K doesn’t understand something, she would ask and she did ask a lot of questions. After the training, some of the Japanese girls went up to her and said, “Wow K, you sure dare to ask a lot of questions.” So, I guess it really still depends on the kind of environment one is raised in.
Another girl who also grew up in the States, E, moved to Japan when she was in middle school and when she started to ask a lot of questions, the teacher told her, “You ask too many questions. Just keep quiet and listen.” Since then, she didn’t dare to speak up in class again. I think it’s very important what adults say to children, but unfortunately, the teacher who said that to her was probably raised in that same environment where you should never question the teachers, so to the teacher, that was the right thing to do.
Wah your this post demoralise me sia 🙁 i would like to get married to a Japanese girl in future if possible but i dislike fake people :/ looks like have to be monk liao :S
lol, I said many people I know are like that; not everyone is like that.
Maybe you can meet someone who loves you for who you are. Don’t let it affect you.
These are just based on a very small sample size of the people I know.
But But with all the horrible divorce statistics, people still being single rates, low birth rates etc, coupled with all the hearsay, it seems like a huge number of people are like that T_T.
Sigh but you are right, not everyone is like that, i just have to hope for the best! Haha
There are many people who are not like that and some of these people has got to meet someone; that someone could be you.
Don’t think that just because the odds aren’t high, it’ll never be you. If it’s gotta be someone, it can be anyone. You included.
I wish you the best.
Wow i like your quotes man! Haha, thank you, i feel encouraged already! I hope you find the one too 🙂
hahaa why Japanese girls? Cos they are gentle, sweet and kawaii? Lol. (totally assuming here based on stereotype) According to our GJH here, seems like he hasn’t had much luck with finding a suitable one, though I am sure all his experience were indeed with sweet, gentle, Japanese ladies. This only shows that those traits alone, though desirable, are not enough to sustain a relationship between two.
And there’s so many girls, why must it only be Japanese? Hope you find the one oh 🙂
Hahaha actually i think SG also a lot of gentle, sweet and kawaii girls, but they are all attached and married already oops…
As for why Japanese girls hmm because I like the language, like the culture and want to live there, so naturally I would want to get together with a girl there too?
But i guess it doesn’t necessarily have to be a Japanese girl after all, i would like to, not a must! I guess if i can connect with the person, the nationality ain’t really a deal breaker.. 😀
Thanks for the well-wishes too haha!
Hope you get to fulfill your dream and live in Japan! 🙂 Can meet up with GJH when you are there. lol.
Haha hopefully! >_< He like busy leh, quite paiseh to jio him for coffee also
LOL, if you do drop by, let me know
Hahaha okay steady 😀
In my view, there’s only one reason for choosing marriage-
To have that someone that I like enough and whom would willingly choose to walk through life’s ups and downs with me.
Sounds simple, but, very tough.
By the way, I’m not a believer of how people of a certain nationality should behave- its too susceptible to stereotypes. And what @Dixon said sounded a bit too much like infatuation – like how teenage girls adored their Oppas. :/
Little understanding. Too much expectation.
Not a good recipe for a lasting relationship.
I agree with your points on the reason for choosing marriage.
Regarding the behavior of a particular nation of people, it’s probably less about how they should behave, but rather how they actually behave in general. But I see your point. I’m sure there’s an almost infinite combination of behavior among groups of people, so each and everyone can be very different, but culture inculcates certain values that affects how people behave with regard to certain specific traits, and when these traits occur in a significant amount of people in however small a sample size we may have, it makes sense for us to decide that it could be true for most people, until we get evidence to the contrary.
Wow Gwyneth i think you are right, but stereotypes are there for a reason, when a huge majority of people behave and act in a same way, it sort of creates a societal norm? There is no denying that Japan is facing marital, birthrate and other social sort of issues based on statistics and that was what i am afraid of haha. But that’s not to say i fully think that as Japanese (or insert other nationality here), they surely behave this way, i guess humans are awesome in the sense that we are unpredictable creatures and deviate from the norm sometimes 🙂
And while i agree i have little understand of Japanese girls, i do not think i have too much expectations 😛