ABSTRACT
While at high school, very few of the women announced that they had steady boyfriends. They mixed with other girls and formed close-knit friendship groups. I recall being surprised to find that having a boyfriend or a girlfriend was not as important to them as to their Australasian counterparts, some of whom I had taught as a high school teacher in both Australia and New Zealand. The girls were in many ways ‘asexual’, to quote from Merry White’s book The Material Child (2003). They did not dress in a way that emphasised their feminine sexuality, and boys did not display the kind of masculinity that prevailed in Australasian schools in the form of physical strength and a macho subculture. I saw several boys bringing to school what seemed to be very cute lunchboxes and water bottles decorated with the Snoopy (cartoon characters). Neither girls nor boys disparaged these actions. But this did not mean that none were sexually active. Nationally, about 40 per cent of young people are sexually active by the time they graduate from high school at the age of 18, a substantial increase from less than 10 per cent three decades ago (Iwamuro 2005). Some of the students at the two high schools where I spent one year were no exception, but did not let others know about their sexual activity. Kanako was one of them; she eventually married her boyfriend. Yayoi had a steady boyfriend, a graduate of the same high school, whom everyone thought she would marry. Young people today have considerably more time than their parents to
experiment and enjoy relationships before entering marriage. The age at first marriage has gone up considerably over the years. In 1970, the average age for first marriage for males and females was 26.9 and 24.2 respectively; in 1995 it was 28.5 and 26.3 (Nihon-Fujin-Dantai-Rengôkai 1996: 236). The average age of a woman when she had her first child also went up from 25.4 years in 1960 to 27 years in 1990, and in 2000 it was 28 years (Nihon-FujinDantai-Rengôkai 2001: 267). My actors were aware of this and intended to enjoy this period of relative freedom. From the daily conversations at the high schools, I realised that the girls had been exposed to many cases of early (i.e. late-teen) marriage among family friends or relatives, and that many of them did not want to follow this path. They said, ‘I want to have a good time before having kids.’ I wondered at the time how they would meet
people to form relationships with and what kinds of marriage arrangement they would pursue in the years to come. This chapter examines the women’s experiences of relationships. These
were important aspects of their understanding of the ‘real world’. While relationships include marriage and divorce, I have decided to exclude them here. They will be examined separately in the following chapter, since marriage brings a distinctive set of social expectations and experiences, such as those stemming from extended human relationships. This chapter instead focuses on relationships outside marriage, some of which eventually led to marriage. Relationships affected, and were influenced by, employment experiences. Firsthand experience of the large earthquake in early 1995 also affected individuals emotionally and materially, directing existing relationships more clearly towards marriage or exposing their fragile nature. How did the women find partners? What did they want from relationships and marriage? Did these expectations differ between individuals? How did unmarried women change their expectations of marriage over the years? How did class, ethnicity and institutions affect decisions about relationships and marriage? The women experienced varying types of relationships: a steady relation-
ship; marriage (with or without children); divorce; a post-divorce relationship; and no steady relationship. Table 6.1 shows how the women experienced different types of relationships over the years (1990, 1992, 1997 and 2001). In early 1992, two years out of school, three of the 21 women had married
at the age of 19 or 20. One had an 18-month-old baby. In the next five years, four more of the women married, and more babies were born. At the age 24 or 25, Oriko and Satoko had two children, and Hatsumi had one girl. While some were content with their marriage (which entailed partner, sometimes children, in-laws and other relatives), others were not. Indeed, between 1992 and 1997 three marriages resulted in divorce. In January 2001, the women were 29 and almost ten years out of high school. Nine of the 21 were married, five with children. Two were engaged to marry soon. Five had a steady partner, including the two who were divorced and in new relationships. Four of the women had no boyfriend. Below I will examine how the women formed relationships, why some of
them found themselves partnerless, and how they perceived arranged meetings with a prospect of marriage. I will then turn to how the women assessed a marriage proposal, and the distinctive experiences of ethnic minority women in relationships.
