Mixed marriage in Japan

Mixed marriages in Japan were officially permitted in 1873, during the Meiji period , in accordance with the 103rd decree of the Council of State. According to the decree, such marriages required government permission. Japanese women who wanted to marry a foreigner risked losing their "status as Japanese", that is, belonging to a particular Japanese family, home. At the same time, immigrants from other countries (provided they entered the house of their wife as a son-in-law) acquired “Japanese status”. The decree also gave Japanese wives the right to go abroad after their foreign husbands, who were ending their service in Japan.

Thanks to the decree, by 1897, 265 mixed marriages had been concluded. 230 of them were described in their study by the scientist Koyama Noboru . ^{[1] [2]}

Most mixed marriages in Japan during the Meiji period were between Japanese women and foreign men. At the same time, foreign husbands, most often, came from England, China, Germany and America, and their Japanese wives were in their service. Among foreign women, most often met citizens of Germany, America and England.

In the postwar period, more and more mixed marriages began to take place, especially between Japanese women and Americans. This happened, firstly, due to the fact that the male population of Japan decreased markedly - during the Second World War , about two million Japanese soldiers died. ^[3] Many men returned with injuries, and due to their physical and moral condition they were not ready to start a family. Secondly, the American way of life was becoming more popular and was associated with Japanese women with stability, which many lacked in post-war Japan.

The number of mixed marriages in Japan began to grow rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s. and reached its maximum in 2006, when more than 40,000 marriages were concluded. However, in recent years the number of mixed marriages has been gradually reduced: the reason for this was the 2005 immigration act, which complicated the process of obtaining a Japanese visa. In 2011, 25,000 mixed marriages were concluded, and in 2013 - already about 20,000. ^[4]

If in the post-war period, couples dominated among mixed families, where the husband is a foreigner and the wife is Japanese, at the beginning of the 21st century the situation changed in the opposite direction: in Japan there are more and more foreign wives (in 2011 there were more than 19,000). Most of the women who enter into a mixed marriage with the Japanese today come from China (8, 104 couples), the Philippines (4, 290 couples), South and North Korea (3, 098 couples). ^[five]

Since the late 1980s, the number of marriages between Japanese and people from the Soviet Union also began to increase: in 1995, 198 marriages were concluded, and in 2011 - already about 5000.4 ^[6]

• Marriage
• Crossbreeding