Leftover in China

by Roseann Lake

  Changing Course

  As the days went by, Yanyan, my pregnant colleague with the predilection for online shopping, grew rounder. Though she dutifully ate her morning egg and was even adding special proteins to her soy milk, she began to look and feel weary. She was nearly three months pregnant and still hadn’t told her family, the majority of her friends, or even our employer. Work was busier than ever before, and these stressors were taking a toll on her.

  Then one week, she was absent for three days. She texted to let me know that some complications had required her to spend time in the hospital, but that she was back home and OK. I saw her again at the office for a few weeks, eating her daily egg and starting to dress in baggier clothes to camouflage her burgeoning bump. She seemed to be easing into pregnancy until the beginning of May, when she didn’t come to the office at all. I had no news, and couldn’t get in touch with her. It was only after the fact that I learned there had been a fatal formation of the baby’s heart.

  Yanyan was devastated. She had done so much to prepare for the arrival of this little creature, and was so eager to swaddle him (or her) in her arms. Doctors told her that she could try again, but the very fact that’d she’d already lost one baby was making her question her fertility. Another thing she was questioning was her impending marriage. Though her husband-to-be had been by her side throughout the entire pregnancy, he didn’t seem very affected by the loss of their baby.

  “Seeing him so untouched after losing something that meant so much to me made me question our compatibility,” she later told me. “Once the baby was gone, it’s like there was nothing holding us together.”

  She called her wedding off.

  After her miscarriage, Yanyan quit her job and went back to her hometown for three months. Returning to Beijing in September, she enrolled in a master’s program and began working part-time at a university. She got an edgy new haircut, started wearing more youthful clothing—purchased on Taobao, of course—and when we finally arranged a time to meet up, I was delighted to see her looking so energized. “I am leftover again,” she said with a shrug and a smile. “But it was the better choice for me.”

  11

  BAMBOO CEILINGS

  Men are looking for women that have ceased to exist and women are looking for men that have yet to exist.

  —ALBERT ESTEVE, DIRECTOR, CENTRE D’ESTUDIS DEMOGRÀFICS

  Though the bulk of these pages have been focused on China, it would be wrong to pretend that the world’s most populous nation is the only one with a unique set of cultural, political, and social variables that color the nature of marriage and relationships. More foolhardy yet would be to assume that China is the only place on the planet where women are reorganizing the timetables of their early adult years, choosing instead to get their educations and careers further under way before making legally binding commitments or having babies.

  The truth is, a similar shift has been happening across Asia for decades, and in much higher proportions.

  In Japan, unmarried women over twenty-five used to be known as “Christmas cakes,” in reference to the idea that much like a holiday sweet that loses its appeal after the twenty-fifth of December, a woman loses her appeal after her twenty-fifth birthday. It was replaced in 2003 by the label make-inu, which means “defeated dogs,” though both expressions have now been substituted in favor of the more popular “New Year’s noodles.” This term gives women six more years—one for each day after Christmas—before they are categorized as having transgressed their sell-by dates.

  If current statistics are any indication, Japan might soon be a nation of noodles. Its proportion of unmarried women has steadily climbed from the 1970s—when fewer than 20 percent of women between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine remained single—right up until today, when over 65 percent of Japanese women under thirty have never married. Part of this increase can be explained by a delay in the age of marriage, but for the most part, the numbers represent a shift toward women not getting married at all. At age thirty-five, nearly 35 percent of Japanese women remain unmarried, as opposed to 7 percent in 1970. In a country where fewer than 2 percent of babies are born out of wedlock, these numbers help explain why Japan has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.

  To get a better sense of the economic context under which Japan’s marriage rates decreased, it’s worth noting that between 1965 and 1980, Japan was considered an “economic miracle.” Its nominal GDP soared from $91 billion to a record $1.065 trillion, temporarily turning it into the second largest economy in the world, after the United States. By the mid-’80s, however, Japan became the site of dangerously inflated real-estate prices, overvalued stocks, and unbridled credit expansion, all of which contributed to an asset price bubble that burst in 1992. Since the late ’90s, GDP growth has been more or less stuck at under 2 percent and population growth has slowed to the extent that there are now more adult diapers sold in Japan than baby ones. UN data indicate that Japan’s current population of 127 million will shrink to 83 million by 2100, and that by then, 35 percent of its population will be over age sixty-five. Its ratio of working-age persons to retirees has already begun to drop—reducing the amount of taxes available to fund the country’s social safety net—and there are no signs that the fertility rate will rebound anytime soon. For a country that currently has debt equivalent to two times the size of its economy, this is no small matter.

  Stressed by Japan’s dwindling population, in a 2007 speech, the former Japanese minister of health, Hakuo Yanagisawa, encouraged his country’s “birth-giving machines” to “do their best” to revive the fertility rate. More recently, several male lawmakers in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly heckled a Japanese female politician—and there aren’t many of those to begin with—as she made a presentation about maternity leave and infertility. “Can’t you have babies?” and “Hurry up and get married!” were among the comments directed at her.

  Other ill-fated attempts at boosting the fertility rate include the local official in Japan’s Aichi prefecture, who proposed that secretly punctured condoms be distributed to young married couples (this is perhaps why more women are needed in government?), and the sudden rise—but limited success of—“konkatsu.” Despite sounding confusingly similar to tonkatsu—Japan’s signature, panko-covered, deep-fried pork cutlets—konkatsu means “marriage hunting.” Coined by Japanese sociologist Masahiro Yamada—who is also responsible for the term “parasite single,” which describes singles who live with their parents so they have more disposable income to spend on themselves—konkatsu became a buzzword in 2008. Around this time, konkatsu-related activities were offered everywhere from bars (singles’ nights) to temples (special tea services for singles seeking good luck in marriage). As reported in the Wall Street Journal, even The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, a Japanese professional baseball team, got in on the konkatsu craze by offering “konkatsu seats.” Set up in the spirit of speed dating, these seats allowed men and women to rotate between innings so that they could meet several new people throughout the course of a game.

  On one level, konkatsu helped to fill the void left by employers, which in years of greater economic prosperity were known for funding in-house matchmaking events and trips that would help their unmarried employees partner off with their colleagues. While the idea of a company that encourages its staff members to marry one another may sound like a huge liability—if not a corporate disaster—in Japan, things work a bit differently. Women are largely employed in clerical work, so the “wives” of the newly formed work couples would often quit and become homemakers, thereby leaving space for a fresh crop of nubile secretaries to be hired and married off to the remaining single men at the company.

  This culture started to change in the 1990s, when Japan entered its first economic recession. Arguably, the same one it is still facing today. According to Akiko Yoshida, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, the recession forced companies to cut back on ext
racurricular activities for their employees, which meant that opportunities to meet a spouse at work decreased considerably. Office romances could still blossom without company intervention, of course, but given the often segregated nature of employment in Japan—men do the serious work in one place, women do the clerical work in another office or part of the office—there weren’t too many chances for cross-pollination. Economic difficulties also meant that companies had hiring freezes, thereby reducing their numbers of eligible male employees. The hiring freezes were especially acute because at that time in Japan, most men were likely to work for the same company throughout their entire careers; once they were in the door, labor laws made it difficult to fire them. As a result, instead of terminating senior, more costly employees—who were more willing to retire later, given the economic uncertainty—firms stopped hiring young ones.

  In cases where company-sponsored events failed to end in marriage, Japan’s miai system—a traditional form of matchmaking by which singles are introduced through parents, relatives, or mediators (much like they are in China)—once served as another way to meet a potential mate. Miai has fallen out of popularity as couples now prefer “romantic” marriages to the one-dimensional “good on paper” matches, but even those are hard to come by.

  “I hardly see single men [. . .] I wonder whether they really exist,” said a forty-six-year-old participant in “No Chance for Romance: Corporate Culture, Gendered Work, and Increased Singlehood in Japan,” a study conducted by Yoshida. The results are drawn from in-depth interviews conducted with forty women between the ages of twenty-five and forty-six; twenty-eight of them single, the rest married, but all living in or near Tokyo. The study, which is the basis of a recent book on the same topic, provides insight into how Japan’s economy and, by extension, its work culture, have contributed to its bleak marriage and fertility rates.

  The demands of life as a salaryman in Japan are well documented. They include long, inflexible hours, late nights of drinking with colleagues to encourage office harmony, and a seniority-based system that requires extreme loyalty to one’s company in exchange for promotion and lifetime job security. Because none of these professional demands make it easy to raise a family—and because Japan has the added quirk of frowning upon mothers who hire nannies or outsiders to look after their children—it is common for Japanese mothers to exit the workforce after giving birth. This is partially because there are some mothers who simply prefer not to work; the concept of sanshoku hirune tsuki (“three meals and a nap”) and looking after the home is seen as an appealing alternative lifestyle to the demands of working in an office. “I want to get married because I sometimes feel like quitting my job,” said Yuriko Akamatsu, a thirty-five-year-old office worker quoted in the Wall Street Journal. “Marriage is like permanent employment.”

  Although many of the married women in Yoshida’s study expressed discontent with their marriages and some single women were turned off by negative stories told by their married friends, the majority of single women she interviewed wished to marry. In fact, popular media suggests that the biggest flight from marriage might not actually come from Japanese women, but from men. Japan seems to have a growing population of “herbivores”—soshoku kei danshi, or “grass-eating men” who have no interest in “flesh,” or in getting married or finding a girlfriend. The term is also used to refer to men who have lost their “manliness,” and according to a poll conducted by Lifenet, 75 percent of single Japanese men in their twenties and thirties label themselves this way.

  While some scholars, including Yoshida, believe that the herbivore phenomenon is an overblown, media-induced attempt to create moral panic, there are nonetheless several wild theories that attempt to account for Japan’s rise in herbivore men. These include Japanese philosopher Masahiro Morioka’s idea that they are the product of Japan’s postwar peace. According to Morioka, because Japan has not participated in any wars, men have lost the chance to become manly by being a soldier. Prolonged peace, argues Morioka, has caused Japanese men to become less aggressive, a characteristic that may have tragically spilled over into courtship practices. Another theory is that Japan’s manga obsession has made Japanese men prefer fantasy women to real ones.

  Manga and masculinity-creating warfare aside, the rise in the popularity of herbivores is most plausibly linked to the decline of the Japanese economy and a growing disillusionment with job opportunities. Young men have witnessed the decline of the salaryman (pronounced sa-ra-ri-man in Japan) and understand the extreme pressure associated with being the dominant (or sole) breadwinner in a society that no longer offers the jobs to make that feasible. According to an informal survey by Kaori Shoji, a journalist with the Japan Times, some common reasons that herbivore men don’t actively pursue women is because it’s “too much of an effort” or “they have no money” or simply, “it’s tiring.” Perhaps because Japan does not have a culture of sajiao—the strategically executed temper tantrum meant to pander to a man’s ego that June once tried to master—its men may feel even more vulnerable in the face of their country’s growing population of “carnivore” women. These “flesh-seeking” ladies are characterized by their more overt sexuality, their extroversion, and their willingness to make a first move.

  Still, there are limits to the types of moves Japanese women can make, especially in the workforce. As reported by Emma Chanlett-Avery and Rebecca Nelson in “ ‘Womenomics’ in Japan: In Brief,” a paper written for the Congressional Research Service, it’s still common for Japanese companies to enforce a two-track hiring system; one for elite, specialized workers known as sogoshoku, and another for administrative workers, known as ippanshoku. Because worker longevity is highly prized and it is assumed that most women will leave the workforce after having children, few companies are willing to invest in hiring (and training) women for the elite track. This often means that even before having children, women are relegated to the OL or “office lady” career track, which has a huge impact on their career prospects. According to the latest figures available, less than 12 percent of Japan’s elite hires are women. As a result of women leaving the workforce for marriage or pregnancy, Japan’s female workforce participation resembles an M curve; women are not very present in the workforce between their late twenties and late forties, or during what are usually the most fruitful years of one’s career.

  Further complicating matters is the Japanese phenomenon of matahara, or “maternity harassment,” which leads pregnant women to sometimes be bullied by their bosses or colleagues into resigning, as it is assumed they will have to take on extra work while a new mother is on leave. By law, Japan offers new parents up to a year of leave at partial (66 percent) pay, but the frequency of matahara—which is experienced by an estimated 1 in 4 Japanese women—suggests that more than a handful of employers are loath to grant it.

  Considering the employment difficulties faced by women, it’s not surprising that according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, Japan’s female employment rate is ranked eightieth out of 144 countries, just above Tajikistan and below Angola. This is already an improvement over past years, thanks to structural reforms mandated by Japan’s prime minister, Shinzō Abe.

  For perspective, it’s worth keeping in mind that the prime minister belongs to his country’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and was not always a proponent of reforms and policies that encourage the participation and advancement of women in the Japanese workforce. In fact, back in 2005 when a previous government was taking steps to promote greater equality in Japan, as reported in The Economist, Abe and fellow conservatives warned of the damage that could be done to Japan’s culture and family values if women were treated more equally. (Imagine the bedlam!) One of the main concerns was that a higher population of working women would be detrimental to the country’s already fledgling fertility rate, although it turns out that the exact opposite is true: across the globe, higher levels of female employment are almost always positively co
rrelated with higher fertility.

  “It may sound counterintuitive, but it’s what the numbers show,” said Kathy Matsui, the chief Japan strategist for Goldman Sachs Japan. “In most of the developed world, but also across Japan, higher percentages of employed women positively correlate with a higher birthrate.”

  Raised on a flower farm in Salinas, California, Matsui first traveled to Japan in 1986 on a Rotary scholarship and has worked in Tokyo ever since. In 1999, keen to stand out in a world dominated by male analysts, she penned what would become a seminal report: Womenomics. In it, Matsui argued that the increased workforce participation of women could help counter Japan’s economic stagnation. At the time, only 50 percent of working-age Japanese women were employed, which Matsui likened to “running a marathon with one leg.”

  Matsui has since been credited with coining the term “womenomics”—a system she remains a strong proponent of today. She regularly produces new versions of the report, in which she tracks the country’s progress and makes new recommendations for how to continue to enrich female workforce participation, not only by numbers but by the type of work performed. Matsui’s work has also earned her the recognition of Prime Minister Abe, who has incorporated elements of it into his similarly titled “Abeonomics”—a set of economic policies based on the “three arrows” of fiscal stimulus, monetary easing, and structural reforms, which were rolled out in 2012.

  Following Abe’s realization that making it easier for Japanese women to work wouldn’t send the country down a dark path of moral destruction, he made some good things happen. Thanks to a push to establish new targets for female workforce participation, the opening of new, desperately needed daycare and after-school care facilities, and a bid to allow more foreign housekeepers—Japan has a notoriously strict immigration policy—female workforce participation in Japan has improved. At 66 percent, it is now just a hair over that of the United States, though as Matsui is quick to add, Japanese women are more likely to be working in part-time, lower-paid positions than their US counterparts. “Still,” she said, “for Japan, this is progress.”