Konkatsu = marriage hunting

According to the Wall Street Journal, Konkatsu is a new rage in Japan. It means “marriage hunting,” but there seems to be a mismatch between men and women:

The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, a Japanese professional baseball team, started offering "konkatsu seats" for a July game. The speed-dating plan is to have men and women sit next to each other during the game. Between innings, they will rotate seats and be seated next to someone else.

The trouble with the konkatsu movement is that women seem to be more eager about it than men are. While about 2,000 women rushed to secure the allocated 50 konkatsu seats on the first day of sales, it took several days to sell out the 50 male seats.

Experts say that in tough times, single women feel an urgency to get married for financial stability, while men tend to put off marriage until they feel they can afford it. The konkatsu buzz has coincided with companies' move to shed employees during the recession.

Yuriko Akamatsu, a 35-year-old office worker, has attended two matchmaking parties in the past six months. "I want to get married because I sometimes feel like quitting my job," said Ms. Akamatsu, who didn't find Mr. Right at either party. "Marriage is like permanent employment."

Since October, Imado Shrine in Tokyo has held a prayer service for single men and women seeking good luck in marriage. The service, followed by a tea party, costs 6,000 yen ($62). Hundreds of women apply for a limited number of seats each time, but the shrine's Web site says, "We're short of men."

It’s a strange country.

* * *

“Deery” writes in a comment:

What, men aren't rushing towards marriage? Yet I'm sure if they had a "free sex night", the stands would have been full of men, and women would have been scarce. Just differing interests between the sexes in the sexual market place.

In the United States, it’s considered a social faux pas to openly admit to looking for marriage. The correct term to use is “relationship.” For example, at eHarmony, the most successful online dating site, the word “relationship” is frequently used in its marketing copy, but rarely is the m-word mentioned. A two-syllable word with a clear meaning has been replaced by a four-syllable word with an imprecise meaning.

But anyway, just because “marriage” is a word to be avoided among single Americans doesn’t mean the same restriction applies to Japanese culture.

Comments

[doofus]

So basically its a singles night event?

[Capital R. Rob]

Marriage is like permanent employment. That's pretty direct for a culture that prides itself on subtlety. Of course, when you're a 35 year old woman looking to get married you can't afford too much subtlety.

[deery]

What, men aren't rushing towards marriage? Yet I'm sure if they had a "free sex night", the stands would have been full of men, and women would have been scarce. Just differing interests between the sexes in the sexual market place.

[hm]

Wild hunter-gather mating with physical attraction
Domesticated civilians mating with breeding programs.

Love based on physical attraction is best game for black men.

Love based on material wealth is best game for people living on malthusian edge for long time like Japan.

Best chance for Asian men is to increase world population and stretch resource to limit.

[sabril]

They have a saying in Japan: "A man should be married by new year's; a girl should be married by christmas"

i.e. Men should be married by age 31 and women should be married by age 25.

Women who are 26+ and unmarried are derisively known as "christmas cake," i.e. something nobody wants.

Anyway, I would be interested to know what percentage of these women fall into the "christmas cake" category. My guess is that it's pretty high.

Also, I am skeptical that this is mainly the result of a poor economy. The fact is that the economy in Japan has been pretty weak for 20 years now.

I will speculate that part of the problem is feminism. As marriage gets to be a worse and worse deal for men, more and more men are opting out at the margins.

I recall reading about a year ago that they changed the law in Japan so that a woman can divorce her husband at the end of his career and claim half of his pension going forward.

[deery]

" I will speculate that part of the problem is feminism. As marriage gets to be a worse and worse deal for men, more and more men are opting out at the margins."

I think lower marriage rates are a by-product of feminism, but not in the way that you might think. With feminism (and birth control!) many women can choose to delay or avoid marriage. They can have sex, and not worry as much about an unexpected child derailing their careers. Men, with feminism, now have a cheap source of sex, something previously only available pre-feminism under marriage. So the impetus for marriage, for both sexes, is greatly lessened under feminism. So the next time you get laid by some hot chick, thank feminism. The only way you would doing that under previous generations was if you were engaged/married to the girl, and she might very well be, outside of hookers, the only girl you would ever have sex with.

[david]

They also pay a lot of people to stand around:

http://www.slate.com/id/2221749/?from=rss

[sabril]

"They can have sex, and not worry as much about an unexpected child derailing their careers. Men, with feminism, now have a cheap source of sex, something previously only available pre-feminism under marriage"

I agree that's probably a factor too.

[Lugo]

Geez, why wouldn't any man rush to marry the lazy beyatch who wants to quite her job? And yet she STILL can't find "Mr. Right"! Is it really that hard to find a beta provider in Japan?

[Peter]

Speed dating events tend to draw mainly women in America too. It could be that women feel safer in organized events as opposed to meeting men in bars and nightclubs.

[mike]

"I want to get married because I sometimes feel like quitting my job"

This is what they mean when they say feminism is about choice. It's about having the choice to put off marriage until you feel like quitting your job. I wonder how many lonely herbivore men she created while she was fucking around for Mr. Right? I hope she drowns in a pool of her own tears.

[Leonard]

Half, thank you for posting this.

This story is exactly why I have scorn for the beta males that post on this blog saying how hard it is to find a woman.

All these beta males have to do is start going to all the hundreds of speed dating events in Manhattan and lower their standards. There are literally thousands of women out there on the prowl.

No luck in Manhattan? Fly to tokyo and get on the speed dating routine there.

What the beta males on this blog really means is that they can't get a woman who is a 7+. There are plenty of 5's and 6's out there.

I wish the betas would just admit that their problem is standards higher than what is available to them, not that nothing is available to them

[Gil]

Whilst deery makes a good point, maybe humans are similar to certain species of birds - a family group whereby all but two members support of the offspring of the Alpha male and Alpha female? Or maybe polygyny is the natural order, everyone supports the Alpha male, his harem and his children. Undoubtedly, monogamy is a fairly recent forced institution in history.