Japan Unmarried Female Mate Choice And The Reasons For Changes In Standards

It is a prevailing phenomenon that Japanese people nowadays prefer to be single or marry at a mature age. Some Japanese people even prefer to stay single all their lives. Under such background, the standard of women choosing their spouses changes a lot. This paper summarizes the standard changes of Japanese women choosing their spouses and tries to find out the reasons.The period of being single and late marriage started in the1970s in Japan. Though more young people delay their marriage and the national marriage rate declines continuously, the author finds that the marriage wish of Japanese young people is still very high and presents relatively high enthusiasm by investigating young people’s opinion of marriage and the reason of their being single.The reason for young people staying single is that they can not find the right person. Under the background of being single and late marriage in Japan, the paper focuses on standards and requirements of Japanese women’s "right person". By sorting out the catchwords of women’s spouse choosing since1980s,we can find that the standard of spouse choosing changes from "Three Gao" in the1980s to "Three Di","Three Shou" and "Three Ping" in recent years. Specifically the following changes can be found:1) Japanese women tends to be realistic on spouse choosing, which is different from the standard of merely "Gao" in the past;2) the relation between the two people tends to change from men-centered in the past to couple-centered or even self-centered nowadays;3) Japanese women today attach more importance to men’s inner side rather than the purely pursuit of external capability marked by economic power;4) the standard of women’s spouse choosing tends to be diversified.The main reason for changes of women’s spouse choosing standard is that the unsteadiness of young people’s work, decrease of income, women’s conceptual change caused by the rising social status, weakened function of traditional marriage and the influence of individualism, etc. It is difficult for women to find high-paid men, so that women tend to look for men with average income and steady job, which makes women more realistic and mature towards choosing spouse. Japanese women’s social status rises as they involves in more social activities, which makes women far away from just being the accessories of men. Women start to pursue the equality between men and women and the standard of spouse choosing changes to be couple-centered or even self-centered. The impact of traditional marriage is weakened as being single is no longer a weird or heterogeneous phenomenon and marriage is no longer the only way to obtain happiness, but an approach to be happy. Women seek to find one who can bring them happiness and attach more importance to spiritual and psychological comfort. Women tend to be more self-centered under the influence of individualism and the standard of spouse choosing is more diversified.