According to the BBC, the Prime Minister of Japan, Taro Aso, firmly jammed his foot in his mouth this week when he essentially told young, poor Japanese couples not to get married. As his Liberal Democratic Party struggles to salvage anything in the run-up to their elections, the PM said, "Young people had better not get married with little money."

While one may guess that he meant to say, you should have a little bit of money and direction before starting a family, he went on to say that, in essence, that respect is hard to achieve without gainful … Read More

Not to judge (or stereotype), but there is some strange love going down in the nation of Japan. Per a great piece in the New York Times magazine, some Japanese guys (and, like, one girl) have decided that love and sex and romance with real, live people is not worth the effort. I heard that (kidding).

Essentially, these young men (and, like, one woman) are an offshoot of the "otaku" subculture and really love cartoons (even if it's not cold). While "otaku" denotes a group of people who are obsessed with anime, comics and video game characters, the "moe" … Read More

Herbivore: an organism which gets its food energy from plant tissue.

Good start. According to CNN, a Japanese columnist is very concerned that a subset (possibly a generation) of young Japanese men is going soft. Maki Fukasawa applied the term "herbivore" to men who are not interested in typical manly pursuits (money, sex, kendo, rock gardening et cetera).
In the past one hundred years, the Land of the Rising Sun has gone through a myriad of identity shifts. They've gone from agrarian to industrial, from aggressively expansive to sternly pacifist, from fiercely isolated to a great cog in … Read More

Being a runaway bride has nothing on a Japanese groom's tactic for avoiding his nuptials: setting fire to the hotel where he was meant to marry later in the day.

Reuters reports that the 39-year-old groom, Tatsuhiko Kawata, told police he set fire to the hotel so he "wouldn't have to go through with the wedding." In an even juicier turn of events, Kawata is already married! Desperate times call for desperate measures indeed.

Like in the US, Japanese need to obtain marriage certificates at a city hall, so chances are Kawata and his fiancee planned to get this done post-wedding. … Read More

The old honeytrap trick has taken hold in Japan. According to The Sunday Times, Japanese men and women are hiring professional seducers to entrap wayward spouses. Judging by the text, it seems like divorce on that side of the Pacific is not quite as easy as this side. So, in order to make things happen, sometimes you have to give the other reluctant spouse other options or damaging evidence. So, there are a handful of Japanese firms that specialize in this kind of chicanery.

The first step is figuring out what the spouse's type is, then … Read More

We blogged earlier about Beijing senior citizens who attended marriage marts in order to find mates for their children. Looks like the Japanese are looking to do the same, reports The Calgary Herald.

A stalled economy and a posh home life is keeping adult children in their parents' homes. And the parents want them out.

Says the piece: A government report from 2005 showed 71.5 percent of men aged 25 to 29 were unmarried, compared with 47.1 percent in 1990. For women, 32 percent from 30 to 34 years of age were single, compared with half that … Read More

Maniac Training of Lolitas.

That's the latest mandate from the Japanese government, in an effort to minimize global warming.

Domo arigato… fer nuttin! According to a few surveys here and there, it looks like Japan is the world’s least sexy country. Or perhaps the world’s least sex-having country. Their birth rate is among the lowest in the world and it’s being blamed on the low frequency of intercourse. According to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO? The World Health Organization, we thought you knew), 25% of married Japanese couples have not had sex in the last year. And apparently, it gets worse as they get older (which stands to reason).