Foreign relations
Iattended a wedding this month of a middle-aged girlfriend who was marrying an American scholar. It reminded me that Japanese marrying foreigners is no longer a rare event. Other friends have married partners from Italy, China, South Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Denmark, the United States, Morocco and Britain.
In fact, international marriages have tripled in number since 1985, to 36,038 in 2003. They accounted for about 5 per cent of all Japanese marriages that year, compared to less than 1 per cent in 1980.
Despite the political squabbles between Tokyo and Beijing, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of Chinese women marrying Japanese men - 10,242 in 2003, up from 1,766 in 1985. In fact, Chinese brides accounted for 37 per cent of all foreign women marrying Japanese men in 2003.
That increase is partly because so many Japanese women refuse to marry into farming families: since the mid-1980s, matchmakers have had to search in China, the Philippines and elsewhere to find women willing to live down on the farm.
Among Japanese women, Americans are the most common choice for gaikokujin husbands. But their tastes are eclectic. Close to 40 per cent of the women in international marriages are pairing up with men from a diverse range of countries, including India, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and other Asian and Latin American nations.
International marriages present unique needs for information. There are problems to be solved, experiences to be shared and legal procedures to follow that occur only in such pairings. Increasingly, the internet is providing many of the answers.
Comic books have also appeared and quickly gained popularity, depicting the life, confusion and fiascos of Japanese wives married to foreign men.
One best-seller is Darin wa Gaikokujin (My Darling is a Foreigner), by cartoonist Saori Oguri, a humourous account of life with her writer husband Tony, half-Hungarian and half-Italian.
Sometimes he acts and speaks in ways that collide head-on with Japanese customs, and his wife endeavours to cope with such incidents by exploring the cultural differences that underlie them.
Other comics include Indo-na Hibi (Indian Days), and Indian Couple's Cup [of tea], now in its 6th printing, by a female cartoonist who is married to an Indian. Many readers say these books help them identify with friends and relatives married to foreigners, or to understand what their own foreign darin are saying and thinking.
