Latest situation of Japanese Kon-katsu

At the moment in Japan, we lately see the word “Kon-katsu” everywhere on TV, magazines, etc. Like “Shu-katsu”, shortened from “Shushoku katsudo”, preparation activities for job hunting; “Kon-katsu”, shortened from “Kekkon katsudo”, means preparation activities for getting married.

In this country, despite their sexes, there are many young males and females who cannot make a life-time commitment even if they want to and now is said to be the time young people need to do some “Kon-katsu” if they want to get married. Why can’t they get married? Whether lucky or not (?), I am married and to be honest, I could not think of any reasons, so I checked this issue out a little bit.

Young males’ views are:
・Even men can cook easily using all the convenient electric cooking appliances
・We do not have to worry about their meals because there are many convenience stores and restaurants open 24 hours a day
・We are not earning enough to support another person or family
・We are living free at the moment and do not want to be restricted
・We hate children, etc.

On the other hand, females’ views are:
・We hate housework
・We do not give up working or being restricted
・We do not want to have babies or raise them
・We do not want to look after our husband’s parents
・We will not be able to have our own time, etc.

For the last 10 to 20 years, it is surely getting much closer to the “you-can-live-on-your-own” environment. It was tradition in this country that females stayed at home doing housework and males went outside working hard. But now, if you have money you can buy freshly cooked meals 24 hours a day and they are reasonably cheap. Also because of the result of having nuclear families, numbers of young people do not have much experience of living with older generations and have not tasted much home cooking or have not learned how to make them either.

Another reason could be the slow economy. Less opportunities to work as a permanent full-timer and people cannot expect secure income because of the risk of redundancy or bankruptcy. They cannot foresee their future pensions. In a situation like this, if they both work they may make just enough money to live, but thinking about getting married and having children, looking after their aging parents and their own future when they get old, they tend to delay the decision on their marriage.

In these troubled times, the generation who enjoyed their lives and worked hard in their 20s and early 30s, all of a sudden realise that it would be lonely living like that and seriously start thinking about looking for someone to spend time with and start “Kon-katsu”. For males and females with a career, because now it is not easy to get married, they need to do “Kon-katsu” to actively but carefully look for a partner by registering at marriage agencies and going to parties, etc.

Especially, females are more positive about “Kon-katsu”. In the background, there is not much of the old sense of value such as “arranged marriage is only for young people” and “we have choose between work or marriage”; females seem to have found a new sense of value in “we can get both: marriage and work”. Also females have a certain age limit to have babies, so they start thinking about marriage more intensely than males.

Women seem to have a clear vision toward marriage and what they want from it and by the time they want to get married, which is normally between 30s and 40s, so many of them get married at rather a ripe age. This generation is called “baby boomer juniors” and many of them are single. So some baby boomer parents who worry about their sons and daughters sometimes do “Kon-katsu” for their old children. Whatever is happening, it seems the times are changing and it is getting easier for females to talk about marriage openly. What is it like in your country?



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