Now that’s a switch. Tired of following in the footsteps of indifferent husbands, Japanese wives are demanding lives of their own. The postwar boom has given women the jobs and the confidence to go it alone, even if they’re still under social pressure to get married and have kids. The result is a boom in long-distance marriages, often insisted upon by the woman of the divided house. In a survey of single women in their 30s last year by the Osaka matchmaking firm OMMG Inc., more than 90 percent said they wanted to be married, but a startling 30 percent did not want to live with their future husbands.
Good for them. Traditionbound husbands have brought this upon all Japanese men by lowering women’s expectations of marriage. They see unfaithful, emotionally dead salaryman spouses, and figure, who needs that? As recently as the 1980s, less than 24 percent of Japanese wives resisted moving when their husbands were transferred to new positions. Now, nearly half refuse because of “the children’s schooling and their own jobs,” says Satoru Ishikawa of the Tokyo research firm Labor Administration, Inc.
Today’s Japanese brides see other options. Growing up, they “hardly ever struggled financially,” explains Yoko Kunihiro, a woman sociologist with Musashi University in Tokyo. “They never had to compromise to get what they wanted; they wouldn’t compromise now.” Women are marrying later in life (at 26.7 on average, compared with 24 two decades ago), when they have more responsibility and find more satisfaction at work. Emiko Hanabusa, 35, who works for a Tokyo fashion house while her engineer husband is in Mie, an industrial town in central Japan, puts it simply, “What would I do in Mie?”
Staying single can still be an unattractive choice in Japan, where even a 35-year-old professional is not considered mature if she’s not married. Mami Atsuta, a 37-year-old Japanese-language lecturer in Osaka, was badgered with questions about why she was single until she married a German researcher two years ago. He lives a three-hour bullet-train ride away in Kawasaki, but Atsuta’s acquaintances now “compliment” her on how she’s “finally grown up.” Atsuta is amazed at “how much a piece of paper made my life easier.” Others find a more traditional kind of security even in husbands who aren’t at home. “At the end of a rough day, knowing that I have somebody on my side no matter what I do, feels good,” says Sumiko Oshima, a 34-year-old Tokyo writer, whose academic husband resides in Kushiro in northern Japan. “I wouldn’t feel this way if I wasn’t married.”
Of course, no one pretends long-distance marriage is ideal. In best-selling author Makiko Uchidate’s latest novel, “Weekend Marriage,” the part-time union of a closet-space designer and an architect is portrayed as original, fashionable–and fated to end in divorce. But sociologists suggest that distance may actually put the fire back into increasingly frigid Japanese marriages. And all of the 10 divided couples I spoke to seemed resigned to the difficulties. They communicate daily by phone, fax or e-mail, and see spouses when they can. Hanabusa’s husband, Atsuo Shimizu, knows she would be unhappy as “a bored housewife in Mie,” and hopes to join her in a few years.
Shimizu represents the new Japanese husband, less hidebound and macho than the old. Their role model is Makio Mukai, a 52-year-old pathologist whose wife, Chiaki, is the only Japanese woman astronaut. Since marrying in 1986, they have lived together for just two and a half years because she spends most of her time in Houston, Texas, or in orbit. At first, Mukai says, this unconventional marriage was seen as a pairing of “strange animals.” But he has since written two best-selling books about his famous wife, and is regularly invited by local governments to deliver his talk on “The New Partnership Between a Man and a Woman.”
The national government has so far reserved judgment. Many divided couples postpone having kids, which could accelerate the decline in Japan’s birthrate. That is raising the cost of caring for the world’s most rapidly aging population, a trend the government is trying to combat. But indirectly, authorities are encouraging more flexible marriages. Last spring the Ministry of Health and Welfare launched a $4 million ad campaign featuring the popular dancer Sam holding his baby over the slogan “A man who does not rear his child cannot be called a father.” Masaki Matsuoka, the official in charge of the campaign, says: “We wanted to tell the men that it is cool to take care of kids and to tell the women that the times are changing.” That might make it easier for couples to have children, even if they get together only on weekends. I say the more options, the better.
