SEMINAR: Asian Studies Seminar Series

The reasons for the rise in late and non-marriage are varied and complex. Konkatsu('marriage-partner-hunting') is focused on matching marriage-minded individuals, with konkatsu literature, websites and businesses focused on promoting meetings between individuals looking to marry. The literature of konkatsu addresses heterosexual women and men's expectations of marriage explicitly - by asking individuals to consider their ideal partner- and implicitly, through the promotion of particular (gendered) ideals of husband/wife that may be dissonant with socio-economic realities of many. Promoting particular models of marriage, wife-hood and husband-hood as desirable and attainable, konkatsu literature reinscribes marriage as an institution premised on the primary-earner salaryman/housewife binary division of labor. This excludes women who do not aspire to be housewives, as well as men who are unwilling or unable to be the primary breadwinner. Further, it obscures gaps in the perception of marriage between unmarried men and women. In this seminar I introduce some of the literature promoting konkatsu. With this contextual background, I introduce interview data from heterosexual single women and two konkatsu workers, to explore perceptions of marriage and konkatsu as a means to its achievement. In particularly, I ask what konkatsu means for unmarried women, and how does this reflect broader notions of marriage for women in contemporary Japan?