It’s often said that Japan’s society follows a decade or so behind the U.S., and looking at such areas as the adoption of laws about smoking in public places or child safety seats in cars, that statement seems to be pretty accurate. Sadly, Japan’s divorce rate has also followed this trend, and the number of couples calling it quits is higher than ever. Currently there are 2.3 divorces per thousand people in Japan, compared with around 3.6 for the U.S, 2.2 for Canada, and 2.8 for the U.K. These numbers sound pretty much in line with the rest of the world, except when you consider that just a generation ago Japan’s divorce-per-thousand was under 1. The social pressures that have been driving the increase are many, including less economic reliance on the husband by women and a decrease of stigmas about being batsu-ichi, or “one strike out,” a common slang for someone who has been divorced once. A big trend is the rise in jukunen rikon, or “middle-aged divorce,” when couples find their marriage can’t survive the husband retiring and hanging around the wife and her friends all day (the term for such husbands is nure-ochiba, noo-reh-OH-chi-bah, a wet leaf that sticks to your shoe and won’t come off, no matter how hard you shake it). This trend has been aided by recent laws making it easier for women to claim half their husband’s pension if they were together for a certain number of years, which has lead to many books and articles advising women on the best “divorce strategy.”
