A Wedding Every 20 Minutes

By J.D. Reed

In Japan, marriages have blossomed into a $17 billion business

Marriage wrote Novelist John P. Marquand, "is a damnably serious business, particularly around Boston." And also, these days, around Tokyo. The Japanese are as obsessive about nuptials as any traditional Back Bay clan. Moreover, they have far more opportunities to celebrate weddings.

Most of Japan's annual three-quarters of a million marriages (compared with 2.4 million in the U.S.) take place in the fall. In November, when religious calendars are filled with auspicious days for wed lock, Tokyo's 300 ceremonial halls are booked solid for weddings, some holding a service every 20 minutes.

The families of both bride and groom share the cost of weddings, and they pay dearly. They will lay out $17 billion this year for knot-tying festivities, an astonishing $22,000 per couple, six times the price of the average U.S. ceremony. Posters in Tokyo subways, featuring dainty brides and dapper grooms, offer such cut-rate packages as the "Shining Love" ceremony ($2,500), performed in a small chapel at one of Tokyo's luxe hotels. At the top of the line, however, was the recent marriage of Chiyonofuji, a Grand Champion sumo wrestler. Price: $580,000. His bride's three ceremonial kimonos alone cost $370,000. One minor craze in the current Nipponese nuptial season is the extravagant "performance" wedding. At one service, the star-struck couple ascended to the ceiling in a makeshift space capsule trailing dry-ice exhaust.

Such elaborate ceremonies, think some observers, reflect the younger generation's rebellion against traditional reserve and modesty. The oldsters, however, recalling postwar poverty, enjoy flaunting their yen. Notes Tokyoite Ben Tsuchiya, who assisted at his brother's recent wedding: "If it is beautifully done, the wedding makes the parents look good, and can even help in business because it impresses people."

Many Japanese resist the intrusion of Western ways. The omiai, or arranged marriage, still accounts for 60% of the country's matches. While these pairings formerly were taken care of by the couples' relatives, modern arrangements are often no more than a recommendation from a friend, an exchange of pictures or a carefully blueprinted blind date. Indeed, many young people, with the agreement of their families, make their specific desires (looks, personal history, job, salary, hobbies) known to one of 500 computerized omiai arrangement centers. Says one marriage counsellor, Yasukatsu Aoki: "If a couple do not like each other, they can refuse through our office. There are no family pressures."

A typical programmed celebration was the recent wedding of Koji Takahashi, 26, an architect, to Kazuko Hasegawa, 23, at Meiji Memorial Hall, Tokyo's most prestigious marriage parlor. After the simple Shinto ceremony, capped by a sip of ritual sake, the groom, in cutaway coat and silk tie, and the bride, in a dazzling kimono, sat down with their 125 guests to consume a banquet, including lobster salad and ice cream. The master of ceremonies introduced important people from the couple's life--parents, teachers, bosses and friends. The guests offered presents. The current favored gift in Japan is hard cash, mainly to help strapped parents defray the expense of the wedding. Acceptable gifts are $100 for a single guest, $150 per couple. For $18,000, the hall provided the Takahashis with food, invitations, thank-you notes, photographs, kimono and formal wear. The 5-ft. wedding cake, however, was cardboard, except for the bride's traditional slice.

An estimated 90,000 Japanese couples this year will spend their wedding nights in Hawaii, a favorite honeymoon spot. In addition, 5,000 couples elope each year to the islands or remarry there. Wesley Walker and his son Gary, ordained Church of Christ ministers in Honolulu, marry more than 3,000 Japanese couples each year for a modest $300 per ceremony. Most arrive from Tokyo with civil marriage certificates and wait a day before the nuptials to overcome jet lag. Says Denny Walker, family business manager: "One tour company insisted on first-day weddings, and we had a couple of brides fainting at the altar each week."

The wave of Japanese weddings has led to another relatively new and rare Japanese ritual: the divorce ceremony. Japan's baby-boom generation, raised on the Beatles, social protest and affluence, has elevated Japan's divorce rate to an alltime high; three out of ten couples will break up. At a typical split-up rite, guests pay a fee for food and drink. The couple apologize to family and friends and return their rings.

But in truth, divorce is unacceptable to most Japanese. One divorce lawyer recently declared that although more than half of all Japanese couples were unhappily married, their partnerships would endure. Said she: "Japanese are happier to continue the marriage even if it is a bad one."

--By J.D. Reed.

Reported by Alan Tansman/Tokyo

With reporting by Alan Tansman/Tokyo

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