In Japan, marriages have blossomed into a $17 billion business
Marriage wrote Novelist John P. Marquand, "is a damnably serious business, particularly around Boston." And also, these days, around Tokyo. The Japanese are as obsessive about nuptials as any traditional Back Bay clan. Moreover, they have far more opportunities to celebrate weddings.
Most of Japan's annual three-quarters of a million marriages (compared with 2.4 million in the U.S.) take place in the fall. In November, when religious calendars are filled with auspicious days for wed lock, Tokyo's 300 ceremonial halls are booked solid for weddings, some holding a service every 20 minutes.
The families of both bride and groom share the cost of weddings, and they pay dearly. They will lay out $17 billion this year for knot-tying festivities, an astonishing $22,000 per couple, six times the price of the average U.S. ceremony. Posters in Tokyo subways, featuring dainty brides and dapper grooms, offer such cut-rate packages as the "Shining Love" ceremony ($2,500), performed in a small chapel at one of Tokyo's luxe hotels. At the top of the line, however, was the recent marriage of Chiyonofuji, a Grand Champion sumo wrestler. Price: $580,000. His bride's three ceremonial kimonos alone cost $370,000. One minor craze in the current Nipponese nuptial season is the extravagant "performance" wedding. At one service, the star-struck couple ascended to the ceiling in a makeshift space capsule trailing dry-ice exhaust.
Such elaborate ceremonies, think some observers, reflect the younger generation's rebellion against traditional reserve and modesty. The oldsters, however, recalling postwar poverty, enjoy flaunting their yen. Notes Tokyoite Ben Tsuchiya, who assisted at his brother's recent wedding: "If it is beautifully done, the wedding makes the parents look good, and can even help in business because it impresses people."
Many Japanese resist the intrusion of Western ways. The omiai, or arranged marriage, still accounts for 60% of the country's matches. While these pairings formerly were taken care of by the couples' relatives, modern arrangements are often no more than a recommendation from a friend, an exchange of pictures or a carefully blueprinted blind date. Indeed, many young people, with the agreement of their families, make their specific desires (looks, personal history, job, salary, hobbies) known to one of 500 computerized omiai arrangement centers. Says one marriage counsellor, Yasukatsu Aoki: "If a couple do not like each other, they can refuse through our office. There are no family pressures."