One aspect of Japanese culture that many feel is under assault
is the nuclear family. Japanese divorce rates were fairly low
until recently, but there is still a huge stigma surrounding
divorcees that parallels American attitudes of the past. Japan
in 1970 saw 95,000 divorces, in 1996 206,955 with the rate
levelling off in 2000 to around 250,000 divorces a year. This
works out to about 25%, about half the rate of present day
America. Some feel that with the increasing divorce rate in
Japan that the nuclear family concept is breaking down. This is
especially true of the retiree divorces whose rate is
skyrocketing as Japanese wives wait for their husbands to retire
and then divorce them to avoid having to spend all day with a
man they barely know and who used to spend 18hrs a day at work.
But what are traditional Japanese attitudes towards marriage? In
his book, Divorce in Japan, Harold Feuss describes how high
divorce rates are nothing new and for hundreds of years the
divorce rate was on par with present rate