Japan

Japan has a well-deserved reputation for being a techno locally advanced nation, but there's one piece of the technological puzzle they haven't mastered: online dating.

Japan is a cultural and economic powerhouse faced with a serious population crisis. The country's overall population will reportedly contract by almost a third within the next 90 years. Its birthrate is one of the lowest on earth, and the marriage rate is also declining.

On top of that, a 2014 survey conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 49% of all respondents had not had sex in the past month, and 18% of men said they had no interest in sex at all.

Add it all together, and you have a country facing some very unique problems. What happens when people no longer want to procreate?

The answer to that remains to be seen. For now, many are asking how Japan got there in the first place and what can be done about it.

Comedian Aziz Ansari and sociologist Eric Klinenberg address the issue in their new book, Modern Romance. "The Japanese are legitimately worried about running out of Japanese people," they write.

One reason could be a cultural fear of being perceived as the sleazy, superficial player-type known as “charai.” Online dating carries a similar social stigma in many countries, but it could be amplified in Japan, causing Japanese singles to avoid it entirely.

Another issue could be online dating's reliance on profile photos. "In Japan, posting any pictures of yourself, especially selfie-style photos, comes off as really douchey,” reads Modern Romance. Instead of posting selfies, which are considered too narcissistic, Japanese singles post photos with multiple people – or even no people at all. It wouldn't be unusual to come across a profile with a picture of a pet or a posession, like a rice cooker.

And that's not all. According to a recent Fast Company article, many singles in Japan view online dating as a scam. Scams sites proliferated back in the 90s, and reports of scams aren't scarce today either. It's scared many singles away and done nothing to reduce the stigma.

Some are using social networking and meetup sites to meet new people, but out-in-the-open online dating is still a controversial subject in a country that prizes subtlety. Companies like Tinder, Match, and OkCupid can't flourish in Japan because the cultural differences are too great.

With young Japanese singles increasingly expressing frustration, the country's dating scene is ready for the “disruption” Silicon Valley startups are so fond of touting. The question is, which company will step up and be the first to blaze a trail into the brave new world?

In Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg’s new book Modern Romance, they discuss the disconnect of online dating in Japanese culture. Despite Japan’s adoption of and love for technology, single people still stigmatize online dating.

The reasons are part cultural and part historical. Japanese singles haven’t had a good experience with online dating, historically speaking. In the 1990’s when online dating first hit the singles scene, online dating companies had male members pay per message and also used their female employees as bait, posting their profiles on the dating sites to attract more male users. More recently, fake dating sites have been exposed, with companies using male employees to pose as girls on the sites and charging their male members to talk to them – (obviously, those members never get to the date).

It’s easy to see why Japanese singles are skeptical. But now dating apps have made things a little easier to verify. First, like most dating apps all over the world, users are verified through their Facebook profile, so it’s not easy to create fake accounts. And Japan is really embracing social media, especially after both LinkedIn and Facebook helped families find each other after the 2011 earthquake.

But another interesting trend is happening with Japanese online daters. The culture is rather conservative when it comes to dating – and guys don’t want to be thought of as players. Since dating apps have become synonymous with hook-ups, Japanese - and men especially - are weary to sign up for fearing like they will come across as insincere. So people aren’t really embracing online dating.

In fact, they aren’t dating much at all. Most Japanese singles are much more focused on work, which means working long hours and delaying starting a family. This is also taking a toll on their social lives. A 2014 survey by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 49% of all respondents had not had sex in the past month, and 18% of men said they had no interest in sex at all. On top of this, they face a serious population decline.  According to Business Insider, a 2012 report by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research shows the number of Japanese people will fall from 127 million to around 87 million by 2060.

Still not everyone is averse to online dating. The country has seen some interesting trends.

Selfies tend to be popular with online dating in most countries, but are looked upon as narcissistic in Japan. Even a photo showing an online dater by herself is frowned upon because Japanese tend to view this as self-centered. Most daters either post photos with a group of friends (so you can’t really identify the person you are meeting), or they post photos of their cats or random objects. One of the weirdest trends among online daters is posting photos of their rice cookers in their profiles, according to Modern Love.

There are definite cultural and practical barriers to get beyond when it comes to online dating in Japan. But as time goes on and it becomes more trust-worthy and mainstream, hopefully singles will embrace it.

 

A Japanese dating site called DEAiBBS was launched in 2005 and were soon advertising that they had about 120,000 members. In 7 years of operation it has been reported that the dating site has earned 2 billion yen ($22.7 million USD). On January 15, 2013 7 people were arrested and charged with fraud relating to DEAiBBS. It has been alleged by the police that 80 percent of the members of DEAiBBS were not real people. 4 of the arrested people were part-time employees whose job it was to create fake profiles and communicate with other members to dupe them to pay and upgrade their memberships.

Over 45 claims have been filed against the dating service which are looking in total for 85 million yen ($965 thousand USD) in damages. Some victims of the fraudulent dating service had lost more than $10,000 USD to the company.

For more on this story you can read the Japan Daily Press.

eHarmony has launched dating sites in the United Kingdom (2008), Brazil (2010) and now it looks like one will be launched in Japan soon. Currently the eHarmony's Japan website (eHarmony.jp) has a welcome message explaining what Japanese singles can expect if they join the dating site plus a short message at the top saying that they will launch soon.

If the launching of the last two country specific eHarmony dating sites is any indication, eHarmony will probably offer three month memberships for free, for the first three months to help populate the member database. We will update our blog when the new site goes live so stay tuned.

To find out more about this popular international dating service, read our eHarmony review.

“Japan's Fukui prefecture has the nation's biggest share of dual-income households, the highest ratio of working women, and the lowest unemployment rate. What it doesn't have is enough babies.”

With those arresting leading lines, Aki Ito, a reporter for Bloomberg News in Tokyo, opens “Japan's Government Plays Matchmaker,” an article that details an interesting new initiative that’s about to be launched in the island nation.

Introducing…the Fukui Marriage-Hunting Café, the government’s new online dating site for Japanese singles. The idea of government-sponsored matchmaking might sound crazy, but Japan is not the first country to set up a service with the intention of encouraging and aiding the love lives of its citizens. The Social Developmental Network of Singapore, for example, runs LoveByte, a Web site that doles out dating advice and has a search function that allows registered users to find other single users.

The Fukui Marriage-Hunting Café is a unique solution to a potentially-devastating problem Japan now faces: “At 1.34 children per woman, Japan's fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world, well below the 2.1 that is considered the minimum for a developed nation to maintain a constant population.” According to census data, 32 percent of Japanese women between the ages of 30 and 34 were unwed in 2005, a figure that is more than twice the number from 15 years earlier. As an increasing number of Japanese women postpone marriage, or decline to marry at all, the country’s birthrate is dropping to a dangerously low point with serious financial consequences.

Approximately “23 percent of the population is over 65, the highest ratio among the 62 countries tracked by Bloomberg,” which means that the “ranks of pensioners are swelling” while “the pool of workers and consumers is shrinking.” To combat this problem, Japan’s Democratic Party promised to lessen the burden of child rearing by offering families a monthly allowance of 13,000 yen ($150) per child and abolishing the fees for public high school. Naoto Kan, the current Prime Minister, also supported relationships and procreation in his former job as Finance Minister by encouraging his employees to leave work at 6 p.m. to go on dates.

The Fukui Marriage-Hunting Café will go above and beyond traditional online dating sites and Japan’s previous efforts to increase the country’s sagging birthrate by offering money or gifts to couples who marry partners they met using the site’s services. While government-sponsored matchmaking is an interesting idea, critics of the scheme note that “the central government's previous attempts to nudge up the birthrate have not met with success.”

So what do you think, readers? Should governments attempt to play cupid for their populace, or should they steer clear of citizens’ love lives?

Between December 1, 2008 and January 5, 2009 a total of 1,629 online dating sites registered with Japans local public security boards. This is in response to a stricter law which regulates dating sites in Japan. The National Police Agency (NPA) said there was 432 applications filed for the dating sites which was a lot less than expected. It is assumed some dating services shut down due to the law being implemented. The largest application had 286 dating sites listed on it.

The last time we talked about dating regulations in Japan was last January when we wrote about Japans NPA wants Stricter Regulations for Dating Sites. It looks like the NPA got their wish.

For more information on this story visit JapanToday.