Right Brain,
Do you have a source on those marriage stats? I’m not saying they’re incorrect, but they’re high enough to cause surprise. Nearly 17% of Tokyo marriages involving a foreigner is amazing considering under 2% of the city’s population are non-citizens and this group is mostly Japanese-born zainichi Koreans or Chinese. 10% nationally is equally amazing for the same reason.
I do know that the number of marriages nationwide involving Japanese men and foreign women is substantially higher than the number of marriages involving Japanese women and foreign men, although both categories are growing quickly.
When Japanese men marry foreigners, the top three nationalities are, in order: 1. Chinese, 2. Filipino, 3. Korean. For women: 1. Korean, 2. Westerners (North Americans and Europeans as a group; individually, Americans are the largest group, by a substantial margin), 3. Chinese.
People in general seem to be putting off marriage, with the average age of a first marriage for men reaching 30 (nearly 31) and for women, 28. The divorce rate is also climbing.
As for women-only cars, I have not seen them first hand, but I’ve been told that Boston has introduced a similar, if not identical system.
I think it’s hard to say that the chikan (train groper) phenomenon is uniquely Japanese or a result of Japanese culture. If New York had trains as crowded with standing passengers as Tokyo does, or commutes as long, we might see such crimes increase there. It’s worth pointing out that such crimes are significantly more rare on uncrowded trains and outside of dense urban areas (or trains leading directly to and from them.)
As for Kyoto, while it has been “modernized” in an unfortunate way, its temples are the crown jewel of the national historical monument program and are, as far as I have seen, quite well maintained, even down to regular replacement of Kinkakuji‘s 24K gold-plate exterior and meticulous rakings of the city’s famous Zen rock gardens.
Why Kyoto feels the need to spend money on monstrosities like the Kyoto Tower is baffling, as are the reason for the lack of protection for old houses and more mundane structures – the focus on temples to the exclusion of other items of historical importance is distressing.
