I have come across some rather shocking figures. Among unmarried men aged 18–34, more than 5 tenths have neither girlfriends nor even friends of the opposite sex, and among 30–34-year-old single men, 3 tenths are virgins.
Such people apparently often become desperate and pay large membership fees to marriage-information services. At major firms, the cost for a 2-year period ranges from 40 to ¥500,000, while the estimated marriage success rate across the industry as a whole is 7–8%. The explanation is that women place importance on “youth, money, and educational background,” but in any event, it is tough.
However, when you think about it, perhaps this is only natural. Originally, not so many men are needed. The natural state is that only a small number of selected men can leave descendants. Polygyny is the norm.
Japan is monogamous on the surface. However, if you take affairs, divorce, and remarriage into account, and remove the time axis, the picture changes completely. Popular men have affairs and marry many times, so in reality, once the time axis is shifted, they are in a state of “polygyny.” Meanwhile, there are also people, as described above, who have no connection with women at all.
This also accords with another statistical finding: many unmarried women in their 30s, described as “loser dogs,” have experienced affairs and, as a result, cannot be satisfied with men of the same age and remain unmarried. In short, the actual social demand is for polygyny, but because it is not legally permitted, society has become a time-distributed form of polygyny through divorce and remarriage. It may be possible to see these distortions as causing women to marry extremely late and the birthrate to decline.
Looking around me as well, men whom I think are somewhat good marry early. Generally, they get married in their early 20s. On the other hand, those left over are unimpressive.
Perhaps the time has come to do away with the “pretense” of monogamy and follow the laws of nature.
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