Description
Book SynopsisJapan has often been portrayed as a mysterious, sexless, troubled land. Birth rates and marriage rates have been decreasing for decades, and national surveys show that Japanese people are simply having less sex overall. But Japan is not so different from anywhere elseit's simply on the leading edge of worldwide demographic shifts. Because of rigid norms around gender, marriage, childbearing, and work, and relatively strict immigration policies, Japan is also experiencing these shifts more acutely. In The Relationship People, Alpert starts by exploring some of the factors that have contributed to later and less marriage and childbearing in Japan and elsewhere. Alpert then goes on to explore the disjuncture between what Japanese singles report as preventing them from getting married and popularly proposed solutions to this problem. Japanese singles point to economic factors, such as low income, as one of their most significant barriers to marriage. However, much of the popular discour
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: Love’s Labors and Laborers
Chapter 2. Crafting Identity and Dis/Connection with Phatic Language
Chapter 3. Inventing and Reinventing Matchmaking as Phatic Entrepreneurship
Chapter 4. The Protean Landscape of the Internet
Chapter 5. Structural Problems, Phatic “Solutions”
