Marriage in Contemporary Japan

Abstract

Japanese women and men are marrying later and less, and marriage is no longer the universal norm it once was. This chapter will consider the construction of marriage in social, economic and political terms, with relation to ideals of the family, employment, and marriage roles. The links between marriage, fertility, labour and population decline are central to this discussion: Japan is regarded as one of the more extreme examples of an ageing, low-fertility society (Traphagan and Knight 2003, Jones 2007).