Monday 14 January 2019

Cause for Celebration?

Today is Coming-of-Age Day in Japan, when 20-year-olds become adults. Every year there are more young men than young women. This year there are 640,000 men and 610,000 women. It is not good news for Japan that there is consistent disparity. Also, foreign men use marriage so they can live in Japan. And that exacerbates the shortage of young women. Not all Japanese men will be able to find wives or, worse, some men will marry someone they don't really want to. That must make for unhappiness all round, including men's mothers. Foreign men have been able to live and work in Japan through marriage since 1985, when the European Court of Human Rights determined in favour of 3 women whose husbands weren't allowed to live in the UK.