The Economist June 6th 2020 pp28 Marriage in Japan “Knot Happy” “Lockdown begets thoughts of settling down”
Reporting from Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, The Economist notes that in times of Japanese earthquakes, tsunami, nuclear disaster and now COVID-19 there is a rise in mating and marriage. With COVID-19 “People are stuck at home and have a lot of time to think about the future” and in doing so are getting lonely. Consequently, online dating has surged at sites like Sunmarie, o-net and LMO. O-Net has “tried to adapt to the times, offering online rendezvous…”. LMO “offers drive-through meetings…”. “Those who vaguely thought about getting married one day are realizing that the time is now” says Kobayashi Jun of Seikei University. Compared to the 1970s marriage has declined from 1M to 0.58M recently. Perhaps, COVID-19 will induce more to marry.