Increasing Singlehood amidst Labor Market and Marriage Mediation Changes in Contemporary Japanese Society

• In Event: 078 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 06. Roles and Identities in Arts, Work, and Recreation

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the embeddedness of modern marriage mediation within larger economic structures by discussing Japan’s increasing singlehood demographic and the restructured and deregulated labor market that it came of age in as a case study. This focus on the relationship between something as intimate as romantic partnership formation and as public as economic structures is derived from the empirical question that involves the most popular reason in national surveys attributed to Japanese singles’ involuntary singlehood status: “no encounter with a suitable partner.” Based upon a larger qualitative study conducted on Japanese singles’ involvement in konkatsu (“marriage-hunting” activities) in Tokyo, Japan, this paper shows how “no encounters” is the subjective experience derived from the intersection of extant gender segregation at the workplace, vast and sudden emergence of non-regular (“precariat”) employment due to recent deregulation in the labor market, and an increase in single-gender-dominated workplaces within non-regular employment. The larger implication of this is that the subjective experience of having “no encounters” illuminates a relatively sudden structural shift in the locus of mediation for romantic encounters—that is, the shift in mediation from the public (i.e. workplace and community) to the private, individual realm. That the current generation of childbearing-age singles experiences this shift as having “no encounters” and are often relegated to denial, inaction or resignation speaks to an underlying sense of anomie in the face of increasing insecurity in both the public and private spheres of everyday life.

Author

• Kumiko Endo, The New School for Social Research