9. Marriage and Population
in Japan

@28/Sep/2005
RSS Eurasia Club/JICA SV in RSS Amman Jordan

[Purposes] [Coordinator Office] [Schedule] [Materials] [Top]

1. Abstract:
It would be a shocking fact that the population of Japan will be cut half in next 100 years. Number of children that Japanese woman bear in her entire life is constantly decreasing each year. This number had already been reached a real alarming level of 1.32 child/woman in 2002. However, thanks to longevity of Japanese elder keeps unbeatable top in the world, total population will barely keep increasing till 2006. The turning point would be 2006, the population of Japan will never increase, but starts to decrease ever after.

To get married and bear the child is the most simple natural law of the divine creature. Human being would be the top of all creature on earth below the God. Something going wrong in marriage and bearing child in Japan. Age of the first marriage had ever been older and number of child beard by women has ever been decreasing. It seems that no one could stop this truly dangerous social phenomenon.

This is the time for Japanese people in history to take one important and decisive action to curb the vicious problem ever encountered. Or take their way to the total nightmare.

Fig.1 Population of Japan will start decreasing from 2006, reach half of the present in next 100 years

2. Historical Concerning of the Marriage in Japan
In the past, the marriage in Japan is rather different style that we have today. Marriage ceremony was rather simple and less costly. It had been a long custom in Japan that a man visit at night secretly to the girl's house and asked to the girls marry to him. If the girl accepted his offer, the girl's family accept his offer to marry his daughter. A simple ceremony had been set up to announce the marriage and celebrate it. For a certain period after they married, a husband lived together with girl's family as a training period of housework. They moved to husband house, when the wife got her confidence to do all the house works by herself.

During feudal period in 12 century, marriage style of the top class people had been changed similar to present style. A wife moves into husband house from the day of the marriage. This style had been followed by other ordinal people. From this period, go-between had been set up by both family and make marriage more solid and disciplined to prevent easy divorce after the marriage. Engagement gift was introduced in these days. A family of boy presents the engagement gift (usually cash) to the family of girl. Amount of the engagement gift varies largely depend on families involved. In average, it is approximately US$ 10,000. The family of wife to be prepare her wedding costumes and others using the gift and return a part of the gift by memorial goods to the family of husband to be. In this style of marriage, the girl has no time of training to be a housewife. So, the newly married wife usually had hard time until she learn enough all the necessary house works in her husband house.

A marriage ceremony in Shintou Style becomes wide spread all over Japan after the Meiji Era. The first Shintou style wedding ceremony had held in 1908. Since then, Shintou Style Wedding ceremony has been supported among the people due to rather simple to perform and having dignity of the ceremony.

In '70s and '80s, Japan was enjoying super economic growth and people becomes considerably rich in short period, the wedding ceremony had also became inflated so much. People had preferred more expensive and luxurious ceremony. Wedding had became one of the major money making business. Many exclusively made gorgeous wedding halls had been build in the capital cities and major local cities. People spend fortunes to their wedding event at that time.

After '80s, economy of Japan had been matured and stabilized, no big economic growth expected anymore. People got back to reconsidered their life style and their spending. Today, wedding is still gorgeous, but they make every effort to cut the cost much as possible, leaving dignity and gorgeousness as maximum.

Another big change in family style in Japan is popping up nuclear family that consists only from husband, wife and their children. They no longer live together with their parents family. This has been created both problems and new business opportunities. These would be discussed in separate occasion.




3. Marriage Ceremony:
The marriage ceremony in Japan is performed in various styles, like Shintou-Style (Performed in the Shintou Shrine), Buddha-Style (Performed in the Buddhist Temple), Christian-Style (Performed in Christian Church) and etc. Currently, some 80 % of all are in Shintou-Style. Usually, a big banquet party follows right after the wedding ceremony. Number of guest invited to the party is around 70 to 150, but it varies largely depend on the family involved.

Wedding banquet will be held just after the ceremony
Bride and bridegroom sit in front of them and entertain the guests

Attire usually worn by the couple is pure Japanese style except ceremony performed in the Church where western wedding dress is worn. Most traditional attire is Juuni-Hitoe, that consists of 11 inner dress and one gorgeous outer Kimono. Ordinal wedding dress is silk-made luxurious Kimono that usually rented only for the ceremony purpose. In the banquet parties, the bridegroom often changes her attire from Japanese Kimono style to western dress at least once to entertain the guests and display herself more attractive.

Example of Wedding Kimono Display-1

Example of Wedding Kimono Display-2

4. Cost:
People always wary about the cost of marriage. Especially young couple often could not afford for it by themselves. If the family of the couple is wealthy enough, the families of the couple share the major part of the cost to show the dominance of their family in community at large. Otherwise, the couple may borrows their wedding funds from bank or relatives, or reduce the cost in every possible way, for example deleting ceremony and banquets completely and simply resister their marriage at the city office where they belong to. One of the trend that couples are willing to choose recently is having wedding ceremony and party in abroad, for example, in Hawaii or Australia in order to reduce the cost. The cost of wedding in Japan has sharply increased, so that even counting travelling coat to abroad, total cost of the wedding will be suppressed compared to having one in Japan.

Typical example of the cost of wedding in Japan is shown below.

		1996 (in US$)
		Total	Husband	Wife
Engagement		16,400	13.700	2,700
	Engagement & Return 　　　Memorial Goods 　　　Fringe costs	8,500 65.0 1,400	7,600 5,400 700	900 1,100 800
Wedding Ceremony and Party		35,900	20,500	15,500
	Ceremony & Party 　　　Cost for Go-between (Match maker) 　　　Fringe costs	31,200 1,300 3,500	17,600 900 2,000	13,600 500 1,500
Honey Moon Trip		8,000	5,100	3,600
Preparation for marriage life		26,800	10,000	26,500
	Furniture, Electronic appliances, Table ware Clothes 　　　Housing (Varies largely depend on cases)	16,000 4,900 5,900	3,100 200 5,300	12,900 4,700 600
Total Cost Engagement Gift		87,900 -8,500	47,900 -900	39,900 -7,600
Total Balance		79,400	47,100	32,300

Table-1 Typical Example of the Cost of Marriage

5. Statistics of Marriage in Japan:
It is a general trend that age of marriage is getting older in many part of the world. This trend is also inevitably seen in Japan without left behind. There would be many factors behind the scene. One of them is the sky rocketing rise of cost of marriage and the life afterward, or education and housing cost for their children and family. Another is that great many choice of pleasures are provided in modern life besides marriage for both sexes. People finds fun and too much busy than thinking of marriage and healthy growth of family and nation. Neutralization of sexes is prevailing all over the world that includes Japan. They often does not feel strong instinct to the other sex than feeling as the same human being. There would be many other reasons, but I could not name all of them instantly.

In below table, some of the statistical facts are shown.

	1970	1975	1980	1985	1990	1995	1997	1998	1999	2000
All Type of Marriage
Husband	27.6	27.8	28.7	29.3	29.7	29.8	29.9	30.0	30.2	30.4
Wife	24.6	25.2	25.9	26.4	26.9	27.3	27.6	27.7	27.9	28.2
First Marriage
Husband	26.9	27.0	27.8	28.2	28.4	28.5	28.5	28.6	28.7	28.8
Wife	24.2	24.7	25.2	25.5	25.9	26.3	26.6	26.7	26.8	27.0
Marriage after Divorce
Husband	38.0	37.8	38.2	39.4	40.1	40.3	40.4	40.4	40.5	40.7
Wife	33.2	33.2	34.1	35.7	36.5	36.9	36.9	36.9	37.1	37.2

Table-2 Age of marriage in Japan

6. Future Vision in Marriage and the Population:
An urgent governmental action is required in order to cure the population problem in Japan. It must be implemented immediately to cure the society where people could foster the healthy family with enough number of children to sustain the nation with their own will. Otherwise, Japan will, without mistake, stumble down to the bottom where only poverty prevail all over. The year 2006 is the epoch-making year, from that point, our population starts to decrease. There would be several measures to be considered to implement, like;

1. Introduction of mass foreign immigration
2. Big incentive to bear more child to newly wed
3. Low cost children cares for both working young couples
4. Provision of opportunities to work for the people beyond 60 years old
5. None

In which direction we are going to head, it is rendered to the people of the nation. Whatever the measure is taken, it would be the hard way to process it and get the favorable results in short period of time. But not much time is left. Only few score of year is left for us until we reach to the catastrophic situation..

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