I have studied in our Japanese language class about verbs, that 'getting married' in Japanese is 'Kekkonshimasu'. Huge amounts of money is spent on getting married in Japan, as the lavish advertising by specicalized wedding establishments in trains and other public places indicates. Eventhough this is the general case, in recent years, simple inexpensive marriages, popularly known in Japanese as jimikon have become popular. The meaning of jimikon is plain wedding.
Love marriages are most popular in Japan. In Tokyo and other cities, love matches or Ren'ai kekkon are increasingly becoming trend. But arranged marriages or miai kekkon are frequent in interiror parts.
In arranged marriages, the families first exchange shashin or photograhs and rirekisho or bio-data, which generally give information about the family as a whole and about the prospective candidate. Even though these marriages are arranged by families, the couple will be given enough opportunities to get to know each other. And in worst case to say no, if anything wrong they found each other, before any final arrangements are made. This formal introduction and get know each other helps marriage breaks after.
The first formal meeting of the prospective candidates is known as o-miai. They will be accompanied by the perosn who is arranging the marriage. In Japan such persons are known as nakodo. Nakodo is an important figure during the wedding festivities in Japan. Nakodo is so important in Japan that even couples who have met without the aid of a nakodo will ask someone close to them to act as a nakodo.
I think the subject of arranged marriage is coming up more and more as Westerners embrace Eastern thought. LATimes wrote a story on the subject and HBO is even planning a TV show on the concept:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.trendhunter.com/trends/hbo-now-casting-volunteers-for-upcoming-reality-tv-show-arranged-marriage
website for the TV show: http://www.arrangedmarriagetv.com
Really that is a good trend in the west. Arranged marriages ensure the responsibility of the family members also in the relation between husband and wife. This assure the support of the whole society through responsible relatives, when there is a chance of friction between husband and wife. Japan traditionally follow arranged marriages, but now a days the younger generation select their own matches, and due to this, fragile married relations and divorce is increasingly reported from many segments of Japanese society. Number of unmarried people are increasing in Japanese society, many men and women are attracted towards the artificial sexual pleasure seeking methods and they find this option as a lifestyle rather than getting married and build a family.
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Jayaprakash