Marriage in Contemporary Japan

Yoko Tokuhiro, Marriage in Contemporary Japan. New York: Routledge, 2010. 164 pp.

In Marriage in Contemporary Japan, Yoko Tokuhiro argues that no single factor can account for the diversity in marriage patterns that one finds across human cultures. For example, the advent of industrialization in the West led to the weakening of family ties as young men and women moved from rural to urban areas. In contrast, Japanese industrialization saw a reassertion of parental control over such institutions as marriage, evidence that structural changes, when combined with culture, create phenomena particular to a given people (130).

As she outlines changing marriage patterns in Japan, addressing in turn both femininity and masculinity, Tokuhiro analyzes the complex interplay between conservative Japanese attitudes towards marriage and Japan's increasingly liberal views on sexuality. She argues persuasively that although reproduction remains strongly linked to the institution of marriage, as evidenced by the low number of extramarital births, sexuality is no longer the exclusive domain of marriage in Japan.

The introduction begins with the story of a friend who rejects conventional Japanese marriage norms, followed by brief sections considering several definitions of marriage and whether marriage inevitably leads to gender inequality. Tokuhiro further delineates some general trends in Japanese marriages, among them an increasing divorce rate and the tendency of men to marry women several years younger than themselves. The latter half of the introduction explains Tokuhiro's methodology: a literature review of materials both in the English and Japanese languages, three months of fieldwork at a "bridegroom school" in Tokyo, and a "snowball approach" to semi-structured interviews, with the interview questions listed in an appendix at the back of the book (13-14).

Chapter 1 utilizes an historical approach to explain how marriage has become normative within Japanese society. Until the end of World War II, the Confucian-based ie seido, or family system, stressed the subordination of individual needs to the needs of the group. Consequently, the continuity of one's family lineage, rather than personal preference, was the primary criterion in mate selection. The ie seido system served as a central institution structuring Japanese society until after the war, when it was formally abolished by the state. However, the patriarchal values embedded in the ie seido system continue to influence gender roles...