Divorce Japanese Style

I have always thought that the Japanese are not made for heterosexuality, let alone monogamy.

• "Almost 40 percent of Japanese married couples speak to each other less than 30 minutes a day, with more wives than husbands contemplating divorce, a recent survey [of 1,200 married people by Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co.] revealed. . . . [C]ouples in their 40s spend the least time chatting -- almost 54 percent of husbands and wives in that age group spent less than half an hour per day talking with each other" (Yoko Kubota, "Married Japanese Quietly Contemplate Divorce: Survey," Reuters, 26 November 2007).


• "A change in Japanese law this year allows a wife who is filing for divorce to claim as much as half her husband's company pension. When the new law went into effect in April, divorce filings across Japan spiked 6.1 percent. Many more split-ups are in the pipeline, marriage counselors predict" (Blaine Harden, "Learn to Be Nice to Your Wife, or Pay the Price: Japan's Salarymen, with Pensions at Stake, Work on Their Marriages," Washington Post, 26 November 2007, A1).

My parents, after more than four decades of marriage, are still together. Not only that, they are decidedly heterosocial, in that they have always spent more of their free time with each other than with their respective same-gender friends. Very unlike many Japanese wives and husbands their age.