[Linganth] Erika Alpert on Japanese matchmakers

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
Today on the blog, Erika Alpert answers questions about her book, The
Relationship People, posted by Robert Marshall.

Please check it out:
campanthropology.org

Best,
Ilana

Press blurb:

Japan has often been portrayed as a mysterious, sexless, troubled land.
Birth rates and marriage rates have been decreasing for decades, and
national surveys show that Japanese people are simply having less sex
overall. But Japan is not so different from anywhere else—it’s simply on
the leading edge of worldwide demographic shifts. Because of rigid norms
around gender, marriage, childbearing, and work, and relatively strict
immigration policies, Japan is also experiencing these shifts more acutely.
In *The Relationship People*, Erika R. Alpert starts by exploring some of
the factors that have contributed to later and less marriage and
childbearing in Japan and elsewhere. Alpert then goes on to explore the
disjuncture between what Japanese singles report as preventing them from
getting married and popularly proposed solutions to this problem. Japanese
singles point to economic factors, such as low income, as one of their most
significant barriers to marriage. However, much of the popular discourse
aimed at Japanese singles elides these economic concerns; instead, it
encourages them to exert more personal effort to meet people in order to
get married. These “marriage activities” (*konkatsu*) may take the form of
signing up with a professional matchmaker, using an online dating site, or
going to singles’ parties. By examining konkatsu from the perspective of
matchmakers, clients, and online daters, Alpert looks at the linguistic
processes of connection that underpin konkatsu and its successes—or more
often, failures. Institutions of matchmaking and technological structures
such as databases and online profiles give shape to the ways singles
connect. As this research shows, understanding this linguistic connective
tissue enables us to answer questions about what constitutes “attractive”
and “marriageable” in Japan, what kind of consciousness konkatsu is
supposed to instill in singles, and what role Japan’s various partner
matching industries might be able to play in alleviating the country’s
demographic crisis.
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