Online Konkatsu and the gendered ideals of marriage in contemporary Japan

In Japan the average age of first marriage continues to rise steadily, and people are spending a greater proportion of their adult life single. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of singles express desire to marry one day. The reasons for the rise in late and non-marriage are varied and complex, but difficulty in finding an appropriate or compatible partner has emerged as one of the key issues. Against this backdrop, the konkatsu ('marriage-partner hunting') industry has emerged, ostensibly to assist singles to find marriage partners. In this paper, we examine konkatsu popular literature, online matchmaking sites and the perceptions of single women and konkatsu workers to consider the ways that contemporary discourses of gender and marriage are reflected, (re)produced or challenged. The 'male-breadwinner family' model, based on the functional roles of 'supportive wife' and 'provider husband', is increasingly both undesirable and untenable for single Japanese women and men. However, values and norms pertaining to gender and marriage as portrayed in matchmaking sites and in some konkatsu literature remain remarkably unchanged. In this context, single women's ambivalence towards konkatsu may reflect both ambivalence to marriage as a goal per se, and uneasiness with the gendered roles in marriage purveyed by konkatsu discourse.