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Abstract
Japan’s low fertility rate has been a concern for over thirty years. Despite a vast literature on the topic, numerous policies and measures to boost the country’s fertility rate, and the will of Japanese people to have a family, Japan seems powerless to remedy the problem commonly called shôshika in Japanese. Yet, Southern parts of Japan show that it does not equally affect the archipelago. Remote islands in Japan have an exceptionally high fertility rate compared to other developed countries. The paper aims to understand the reasons for their high fertility rate by focusing on late and lifelong singlehood (bankonka and mikonka) as a critical factor of the shôshika. It will particularly pay attention to the perception of love and romance in one of those remote islands: Tokunoshima. It will argue that the absence of commodification in romantic intercourse facilitates matchmaking that would result in the creation of a family. People are more likely to meet someone with whom they will have a family when the dating process is not embedded with commodified gestures. On another note, although their view of dating is similar to individuals in other developed countries, the practice of dating takes alternative forms that force them not to rely on the commodification of romance, which increases their chances of matchmaking. As a result, inhabitants of Tokunoshima quickly find a marriage partner, which contributes to the absence of late and lifelong singlehood.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Initiated by Susan and Clyde Hendrick in the 1970s, it is the study of personal and intimate relationships through various disciplines like Psychology, Sociology, Communications, Family Studies and Human Development (Hendrick and Hendrick Citation1992).
2 A monthly pay is 262, 000 yen compared to Kagoshima prefecture’s average of 318, 000 yen, which is already lower than the country’s average of 329, 000 yen (MIC, 2016).
3 Only outsiders may enjoy a romantic outing in a local restaurant precisely because they are not connected to social connections. They are the only ones who can invoke liminality and celebration of selves inside the consumerist threshold.
4 Those “official” couples are usually older couples who already have children, known to be in stable relationships, or divorced individuals enjoying a new love relationships.
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Notes on contributors
Sonny Bardot
Sonny Bardot is a Ph.D. scholar in socio-anthropology at International Christian University in Tokyo. He specializes in the ‘shôshika’ (low fertility rate in Japan) issues with a focus on the perception of romantic love and intergender relationships in Japan. Email: [email protected]
Yoshie Moriki
Yoshie Moriki is a Senior Associate Professor of Anthropology at International Christian University in Tokyo. She graduated with her Ph.D. in Anthropology and Demography from Pennsylvania State University in 2007. She has joined ICU in 2009 after working at the Nihon University Population Research Institute. Research areas: cultural anthropology. She specializes in demographic anthropology with a focus on the relationships between macro-demographic dynamics and cultural values held in society. Email: [email protected]