International marriage still means Japanese man and Asian woman
I obtained some figures of international marriage in Japan, which I shall summarise here, giving the historical trends from 1985 to 2003. The exact source of this statistical data is unclear, but presumably from some government agency.
UPDATE: I found the source, an Excel sheet on the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare web site.
1985 1990 1995 2000 2001 2002 2003 All couples 735,850 722,138 791,888 798,138 799,999 757,331 740,191 Husband and wife both Japanese 723,669 696,512 764,161 761,875 760,272 721,452 704,152 Either foreigner 12,181 25,626 27,727 36,263 39,727 35,879 36,039 Husband Japanese, wife foreign 7,738 20,026 20,787 28,326 31,972 27,957 27,881 Wife Japanese, husband foreign 4,443 5,600 6,940 7,937 7,755 7,922 8,158
Now, by country for the foreign halfs…
Husband Japanese, wife foreign
Nationality of wife 1985 1990 1995 2000 2001 2002 2003 South or North Korea 3,622 8,940 4,521 6,214 6,188 5,353 5,318 China 1,766 3,614 5,174 9,884 13,936 10,750 10,242 Philippines n/a n/a 7,188 7,519 7,160 7,630 7,794 Thailand n/a n/a 1,915 2,137 1,840 1,536 1,445 USA 254 260 198 202 175 163 156 UK n/a n/a 82 76 93 85 65 Brazil n/a n/a 579 357 347 284 295 Peru n/a n/a 140 145 142 126 139 Others 2,096 7,212 990 1,792 2,091 2,030 2,427 Wife Japanese, husband foreign
Nationality of husband 1985 1990 1995 2000 2001 2002 2003 South or North Korea 2,525 2,721 2,842 2,509 2,477 2,378 2,235 China 380 708 769 878 793 814 890 Philippines n/a n/a 52 109 83 104 117 Thailand n/a n/a 19 67 55 45 62 USA 876 1,091 1,303 1,483 1,416 1,488 1,529 UK n/a n/a 213 249 267 317 334 Brazil n/a n/a 162 279 243 231 265 Peru n/a n/a 66 124 135 137 125 Others 662 1,080 1,514 2,239 2,286 2,407 2,601
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Andy Dabydeen said,
November 30, 2005 @ 07:03
Still such a closed society. Well, eventually, they’re all going to die I suppose.
Gen Kanai said,
November 30, 2005 @ 11:56
Seron- can you provide a cite for this data? Where did you get it from? I’m happy that you have it for us but I’d need to have a citation in order to use it. Thank you in advance.
Seron said,
November 30, 2005 @ 23:47
Hi Gen, I found the source of the data, and I’ve updated the page with the web address, as you can hopefully see.
Thanks for carrying a translation or two of mine - it makes me feel wanted, which is quite important considering the time it takes for me to do some of the translations!
Gen Kanai said,
December 1, 2005 @ 11:07
Seron, thank you very much!
I visit your site every time you update. I believe you have a great niche and a great focus on Japan and statisics.
If there is anything I can do to support your efforts, please let me know.
Beth said,
December 5, 2005 @ 04:40
Hi Seron, this site is interesting. Keep up with the good work!
But I wonder how meaningful the stats based on government registry are. Inter-national/ethnic
marriages are common here in the States, but once either one of the partners obtain US
nationality, the couple is “both American” in such stats. Does this mean America is a closed
society? What would be really useful are ethnicity-based data, but such things are hard to come
by.
Seron (Ken) said,
December 6, 2005 @ 00:51
Hi Beth, thanks for your comments.
One thing in Japan is that the rate of naturalisation in Japan is very low. I see a figure of about 15,000 per year, most of whom I would guess are Zainichi Koreans, who are effectively Japanese already. Since Japan doesn’t allow dual nationality, that puts a lot of people off, I think, so I believe it’s not inaccurate to say that more 99% of Japanese nationals were born in Japan.
Also, the recent census didn’t collect data on ethicicity, just nationality. A further thought I’ve had is that perhaps a lot of the marriages to Westerners result in the couple moving overseas - I know when I married the British consul’s tone suggested heading back to Blighty was the standard procedure for most of his customers!
Finally, marriage between to non-Japanese residents are not counted at all here!
Maybe I should contact the Ministry and see if they have more detailed data available?
Japan women dream of the USA » 世論 What Japan Thinks said,
January 6, 2006 @ 00:26
[…] The Asia versus the West split is quite noticeable in the men, but really striking amongst the women. I previously translated statistics regarding international marriages in Japan that shows that the ideals being expressed here do not seem to be realised. […]
picture of zoroastrianism said,
March 12, 2006 @ 07:59
Thank you!
Chris_B said,
June 2, 2006 @ 17:58
Since nationality is the basis for the numbers, should we assume that zainichi are included in the N/S Korean count?
Ken Y-N said,
June 4, 2006 @ 23:44
Chris_B,
Good point, perhaps I should double-check that they have included Special Permanent Residents in the totals; I believe they drop them from the foreigner crime figures, so maybe they are not counted here too?
Kenneth Bayle said,
September 5, 2006 @ 10:22
Thanks for the stat. This is exactly what I was looking for.
Initially, I was surprise to see that Koreans ranked high for foreign-borned husband married to Japanise wife, but after reading about the data being potentially skewed since the data also includes Koreans borned in Japan. It makes more sense.
Although, recently, I have heard that due to explosion of online dating sites, there are a number of Korean men who is bring in wives from Japan.
It would be interesting to see similar statistics on internaltional marriages in Korea.
Shenard said,
October 25, 2006 @ 06:47
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083002985.html?nav=rss_business
Japanese Women Catch the ‘Korean Wave’
Male Celebrities Just Latest Twist in Asia-Wide Craze
This article should explain the Korean Men/Japanese Women stats.
MarkD said,
November 14, 2006 @ 10:25
Very interesting. I wonder how far back the statistics go.
Mrs D. is US citizen, and has now lived longer in the US than she did in Japan. We married in Japan. When we first came to the US, even then ours was not an extremely unusual situation. Not common, but not unheard of either. I would have considered staying, but there was no way I could have supported us in Japan at that time.
The situation of an American woman marrying a Japanese man and living in Japan was far less common, at least back then. I only knew of one woman who did - a missionary who stayed.
We’ve gone back to visit my wife’s family several times. It’s a different place now.
Helen Fujimoto said,
July 20, 2007 @ 08:48
Really grateful that you are putting statistics like this on the web. Want to ask your permission to cite them.
Many thanks indeed!!
Helen
Anthony said,
October 28, 2007 @ 04:02
Bet you the large number of korean-japanese marriages are to Japanese of Korean decent.