ABSTRACT

This chapter describes that single women face challenges in obtaining happiness because singlehood means that they are living an unconventional life in a society in which the conventional life path of marriage has been clearly staked out. Women who remain single into their late thirties and forties are more open to different possibilities for marriage and are more ambivalent about the idea that marriage is the only way to obtain happiness. The women explained their happiness in terms of self-development, freedom, and independence. In Japan, the source of intimacy and companionship for adult women is usually not a woman's husband whose time is occupied by work, but her children and other women, usually through networks created through their children. In Japan, conservative politicians occasionally blame single women for population decline in the context of Japan's falling birthrate and aging society.