Read For Better or Worse, Arranged Marriages Still Thrive in Japan “He was a banker,” Toshiko says of the first young man her parents set her up with. “He was so-o-o-o-o boring.” The second was an architect. He tried to impress her with his knowledge of the historic hotel where they had coffee. “He was wrong on almost every point,” she sniffs. The third, for some reason, “asked me a lot of questions about the French Revolution.” Seven more followed. She turned them all down. Just twenty-six, and seeing on the sly a boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks, Toshiko was in no hurry to get married. With her Yale diploma, her colloquial English, and her very modern outlook on life, this rich family’s daughter from Tokyo could almost pass for a rich family’s daughter from Greenwich, Connecticut. But Tokyo isn’t Greenwich. Like most unmarried women here, Toshiko (it’s not her real name; her parents read this newspaper) still lives with her mother and father. And like most parents here, they think that by the time a young woman reaches her mid-twenties she ought to be married. About a year ago, they began to pressure her to go through omiai, the ceremonial first meeting in the traditional Japanese arranged marriage. Meet and Look “It was such a drag to get up in the morning, because I knew at breakfast we would have another fight about this,” Toshiko says. “I did my first omiai so I could have some peace at home.” Topic : Sex and Gender PART 1 For Better or Worse What is the best way to find a husband or a wife? Should you let your family select a mate for you or should you date many people and try to “fall in love”? Many cultures have the tradition of arranged marriages. These are brought about by “matchmakers” who find and introduce possible candidates to a young person at the family’s request and for a fee. 1. What do you think of this practice? 2. From the first phrase of the title, what can you infer about the author’s point of view on arranged marriages? In the article you will find out what the Japanese mean by being “wet” or “dry” when making a decision and how modern technology is aiding romance. Read for main ideas and see if you change some of your opinions about the best way to select a mate. 5 10 15 20
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For Better or Worse, Arranged MarriagesStill Thrive in Japan
“He was a banker,” Toshiko says of the first young man her parents set her up with. “He was so-o-o-o-o boring.” The second was an architect. He tried to impress her with his knowledge of the historic hotel where they had coffee. “He was wrong on almost every point,” she sniffs.
The third, for some reason, “asked me a lot of questions about the French Revolution.”
Seven more followed. She turned them all down. Just twenty-six, and seeing on the sly a boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks, Toshiko was in no hurry to get married. With her Yale diploma, her colloquial English, and her very modern outlook on life, this rich family’s daughter from Tokyo could almost pass for a rich family’s daughter from Greenwich, Connecticut.
But Tokyo isn’t Greenwich. Like most unmarried women here, Toshiko (it’s not her real name; her parents read this newspaper) still lives with her mother and father. And like most parents here, they think that by the time a young woman reaches her mid-twenties she ought to be married. About a year ago, they began to pressure her to go through omiai, the ceremonial first meeting in the traditional Japanese arranged marriage.
Meet and Look“It was such a drag to get up in the morning, because I knew at breakfast we would have another fight about this,” Toshiko says. “I did my first omiai so I could have some peace at home.”
Topic : Sex and Gender
PART 1 For Better or Worse
What is the best way to find a husband or a wife? Should you let your family select a mate for you or should you date many people and try to “fall in love”? Many cultures have the tradition of arranged marriages. These are brought about by “matchmakers” who find and introduce possible candidates to a young person at the family’s request and for a fee.
1. What do you think of this practice?2. From the first phrase of the title, what can you infer about the author’s point of view
on arranged marriages?
In the article you will find out what the Japanese mean by being “wet” or “dry” when making a decision and how modern technology is aiding romance. Read for main ideas and see if you change some of your opinions about the best way to select a mate.
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These days lots of young Japanese do omiai, literally, “meet and look.” Many of them, unlike Toshiko, do so willingly. In today’s prosperous and increasingly conservative Japan, the traditional omiai kekkon, or arranged marriage, is thriving.
But, there is a difference. In the original omiai, the young Japanese couldn’t reject the partner chosen by his parents and their nakodo, or middleman. After World War II, many Japanese abandoned the arranged marriage as part of their rush to adopt the more democratic ways of their American conquerors. The Western ren’ai kekkon, or love marriage, came into vogue; Japanese began picking their own mates by dating and falling in love.
But the Western way was often found wanting in an important respect; It didn’t necessarily produce a partner of the right economic, social, and educational qualifications. “Today’s young people are quite calculating,” says Chieko Akiyama, a social commentor.
No StringsWhat seems to be happening now is a repetition of a familiar process in the country’s history, the “Japanization” of an adopted foreign practice. The Western ideal of marrying for love is accommodated in a new omiai in which both parties are free to reject the match. “Omiai is evolving into a sort of stylized introduction,” Mrs Akiyama says.
Many young Japanese now date in their early twenties, but with no thought of marriage. When they reach the age when society decrees they should wed - in the middle twenties for women, the late twenties for men - they increasingly turn to omiai. Some studies suggest that as many as 40 percent of marriages each year are omiai kekkon. It’s hard to be sure, say those who study the matter, because many Japanese couples, when polled, describe their marriage as a love match even if it was arranged.
These days, doing omiai often means going to a computer matching service rather than to a nakodo. The nakodo of tradition was an old woman who knew all the kids in the neighborhood and went around trying to pair them off by speaking to parents; a successful match would bring her a wedding invitation and a gift of money. But Japanese today find it’s less awkward to reject a proposed partner if the nakodo is a computer.
Japan has about five hundred computer matching services. Some big companies, including Mitsubishi, run one for their employees. At a typical commercial service, an applicant pays $80 to $125 to have his or her personal data stored in the computer for two years and $200 or so more if a marriage results. The stored information includes some obvious items, like education and hobbies, and some not-so-obvious ones, like whether a person is the oldest child. (First sons, and to some extent first daughters, face an obligation of caring for elderly parents.)
The customer also tells the computer service what he or she has in mind. “The men are all looking for good-looking women, and the women are all looking for men who can support them well,” says a counselor at one service.
Whether generated by computer or nakodo, the introduction follows a ritual course. The couple, who have already seen each other’s data and picture, arrive at a coffee shop or computer-service meeting room accompanied by their parents and the nakodo or a representative of the
Topic : Sex and Gender
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service. After a few minutes of pleasantries, the two are left to themselves. A recent comedy movie had such a couple heading directly to one of Japan’s “love hotels,” which offer rooms by the hour; but ordinarily it takes love a good bit longer to flower, if it does at all.
And there still are those Japanese who consider love and marriage to be quite separate things. Here, in brief, are how three arranged marriages of the past twenty-five years unfolded.
The AsamisMunehiro Asami was a twenty-eight-year-old office worker at a machine-parts company. “I had a friend from childhood whose mother was very pushy,” he says. “One day she stomped into my room and took a picture of me out of my picture album. She also left an omiai picture of a lady. I was to meet this girl and I didn’t want to go.”
Neither did the woman. She was Reiko Ohtsuka, a twenty-three-year-old part-time office worker. She recalls how she “half jokingly” agreed to the meeting, then asked if it was too late to change her mind. It was.
But all was for the best, apparently. Mr Asami warmly remembers the ritual as “like being introduced to a cute girl by your friend.” Miss Ohtsuka discovered that her worries about what to talk about were unfounded. “We dated for four months,” she says, “fell in love, and got married.”
The WatanabesIn 1972 he was five years out of Tokyo University, Japan’s Harvard. He was working for a big Tokyo bank. And, reflecting his heavy work schedule and a certain Japanese shyness, he had never had a date.
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Mr Watanabe - he doesn’t want to be identified further - always intended to marry through omiai. “It’s a good system,” he says, because the partners don’t waste time on someone who doesn’t meet their specifications. It’s also realistic, he adds: “In love marriages, the two look only at each other’s good points: We calculate the bad as well.”
Mr Watanabe was looking for a wife who, first and foremost, “would get along with my father.” To that end, he asked for someone from his home prefecture of Yamanashi. He also wanted a wife who wouldn’t have to support her parents. Being himself a second son, he could qualify for a woman who was also looking for a mate free of parental obligations.
Thus, after an introduction through his uncle, did Mr Watanabe marry a second daughter from his hometown in early 1973. They now have two children. “Everyone wants to get married through love, but not everyone can,” Mr Watanabe says.
The Japanese like to think they are “wet” (emotional) compared with “dry” (rational) Westerners. But Mr Watanabe thinks that “when it comes to marriage, we Japanese are dry.”
The AzumasKikuko Azuma, who found her husband through omiai twenty-five years ago, says the custom is still “the shortest, most convenient way.” She is recommending it to her twenty-two-year-old daughter.
Mrs Azuma was only twenty and just out of junior college when she wed. But she was eager to study in the United S t a t e s a n d b y coincidence was i n t roduced to a twenty-seven-year-old trading company executive about to be transferred to New York. He was from a well-to-do f a m i l y, a n d M r s
Azuma recalls from being chauffeured to the omiai at an expensive Western restaurant. “I admired his social status,” she says.
Then too, her own parents were having marital difficulties, and she feared that if they divorced she would seem a less desirable catch in a future omiai. So she had to move quickly, even though “at twenty I hadn’t given much thought to getting married.”
Didn’t she love him? “Love and marriage are different,” Mrs Azuma replies firmly. “I think after you get married, love eventually emerges.” Does her husband of twenty-five years agree? “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t really know him very well.”
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These is one other omiai success story to report. It is about Toshiko, the young sophisticate who opened this article. After coolly dismissing ten young men sent her way, she was intrigued by Number 11, a physician who had worked in Africa. A friend says he was the first guy Toshiko had met whom she found “intellectually compatible” and who, more importantly, wasn’t intimidated by her.
Toshiko herself isn’t available for comment. She is in Fiji making wedding preparations.
Urban c. LehnerThe Wall Street Journal
After You Read
Improving Your Chances on Multiple-Choice Exams
Multiple choice is a common format on objective exams. You can use the following exercise to practice your strategy for this type of test. Do the exercise without looking back at the reading, as if this were an exam. Here are some tips to help you.
1. There is usually a time limit during a test, so first quickly look through the whole exercise and do the items you are sure of.
2. Next, if there is no penalty for guessing, take a guess at the remaining ones. Generally, if you are uncertain, choose an option in the middle, either b or c, rather than a or d. These tend to be used more for correct answers. If you are just guessing, keep the same letter consistently. Long statements in multiple choice tend to be true.
3. Afterward, go back to the reading, scan for the answers, and correct your work.
Choose the best way of finishing each statement, based on what you have just read.
1. The literal translation of the Japanese word omiai is ............................a. ceremonial introductionb. meet and lookc. computer weddingd. arranged marriage
2. In order to use the new commercial services for omiai, a person must ........................a. divorceb. arranged marriagec. love marriaged. church wedding
Topic : Sex and Gender
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Focus on Testing
3. In order to use the new commercial services for omiai, a person must ........................a. pay moneyb. belong to a noble familyc. go to a “love hotel”d. all of the above
4. Many Japanese do not want to marry ..........................a. an oldest childb. a youngest childc. a middle childd. a twin
5. The reason that this position in the family makes the person a less desirable marriage partner is that he or she ........................
a. is usually very spoiled and arrogantb. does not inherit any money or propertyc. has to take care of his or her parents when they are olderd. must make all the food
6. In comparison with the time right after World War II, the practice of arranged marriages in Japan now seems to be ........................
a. decreasingb. increasingc. about the samed. completely finished
1 Explaining the meaning of Expression and Phrases. Find each phrase or expression in italics in the reading and guess what it means by looking at its context. Then write a short explanation of it.
1. He was wrong on almost every point, .... (line 4)
2 Finding Support for General Ideas. Find specific facts, statistic, and examples from the article to support the following general ideas.
1. In today’s prosperous and increasingly conservative Japan, the traditional omiai kekkon, or arranged marriage, is thriving.
2. What seems to be happening now is a repetition of a familiar process in the country’s history, the “Japanization” of an adopted foreign practice.
3. The Japanese like to think they are “wet” (emotional) compared with “dry” (rational) Westerners. But Mr Watanabe thinks that “when it comes to marriage, we Japanese are dry.”
3 Drawing Conclusions from a Chart. You can find specifics to support generalizations or you can do the reverse: make generalizations on the basis of specifics. The chart Months for Weddings in the U.S. gives specific statistics. Read the chart and write C in front of the one generalization that correctly describes the data. Write I in front of the others, which are incorrect.
Top 10 Months for Weddings in the U.S.Top 10 Months for Weddings in the U.S.Top 10 Months for Weddings in the U.S.Top 10 Months for Weddings in the U.S.Top 10 Months for Weddings in the U.S.Top 10 Months for Weddings in the U.S.
MonthMonth Weddings Month Month Weddings
1 June 256,000 6 October 221,000
2 August 242,000 7 December 184,000
3 May 231,000 8 April 175,000
4 July 228,000 9 November 174,000
5 September 227,000 10 February 166,000Source : National Center for Health StatisticsFigures are from 1992 from a U.S. total of some 2,362,000 weddings, a decrease of 9000 from 1991.March is at No. 11 with 145,000, and January is last with 112,000.
................... 1.! Most Americans get married at Christmastime.
................... 2.! Americans do not care which month they get married in.
................... 3.! Americans prefer to marry in months that begin with the letter J.
................... 4.! Americans prefer warm weather for weddings.
................... 5.! Americans prefer cold weather for weddings.
Topic : Sex and Gender
In small groups, discuss the following questions.
1. According to the article, at what age is a woman expected to marry in Japan? A man? What do you think is the ideal age to marry? Why?
2. What are some of the advantages of arranged marriages? What are some of the disadvantages?
3. Do you think that arranged marriages are more or less likely to end in divorce? Why?
4. Does everyone have to get married? Can some people remain single and still lead a happy and complete life? Explain your opinion.
5. Did reading the article give you any new information? Did it change your views on how to select a marriage partner? Explain.
4 Looking at Love. Take a fresh look at love by reading the following poem by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman (1859 - 1936). Like many English poems, this one uses rhyme, the use of the same sounds at the end of the last words in certain lines (for example: you / grew, brave / behave). Read it aloud to enjoy the rhyme and rhythm, and take care to pronounce the word again in the second stanza in the British way (əˈɡen /əˈɡein) so that it will rhyme correctly.
Oh, When I Was in Love with You
!! Oh, when I was in love with you,!! ! Then I was clean and brave,!! And miles around the wonder grew!! ! How well I did behave
!! And now the fancy passes by,!! ! And nothing will remain,!! And miles around they’ll say that I!! ! Am quite myself again.
In small groups, discuss the following questions.1. Do you think that love can transform a person? How? In the poem, is the transformation
permanent or temporary? Do you agree?2. Is there a regular pattern of rhyme in the poem? Why do yo think the poet used rhyme?
What effect does it have on a reader?3. How would you describe the tone of the poem? Do you think a woman would use this
tone when talking about love? Why and Why not?Topic : Sex and Gender
