In America, I am often asked “do you have a boyfriend?”, “how did to meet him?”. I have a boyfriend and I will get married him after I go back to Japan. I met him on dating app.
I think many poeple like this kind of topic regardless of country where thay are from. So today I write about “how do young Japanese find their partners”.
They need to find partner by themselves
Firstly, I checked the statistic data issued by the Japanese government.
男女共同参画白書 令和4年版 全体版（HTML形式） | 内閣府男女共同参画局
※This website is written in Japanese!
It says these points.
- Age 20s, about 50% of women and 70percent of men answered that thay have no spouse or partner”.
- 90 percent of married couples met outside of arranged marriage.
These indicate that if Japanese young pepole want to get married or get partner, they need to find one by themselves. (Untill the 1960s, arranged marriages were very common and it was easy to get partner without finding one by themselves.)
Dating apps are becoming popular
Next I checked another Governmental statistic data. This is also written in Japanese.
資料1_ウェブアンケート調査結果（速報）_ver2
It says that 25% of newly married couple (married in the last 5 years) met spouses using dating apps. The second place was workplaces or bussiness related activities. The third place was school.
Here is my personal opinion. Before COVID, dating apps ware considered as tools for paid dating or finding one night stand. Some poeple used these to find partner seriously, but they did not say this openly to family or friends.
Because of COVID and Stay-at-home movement, peple find difficulty to get partners and dating apps became popular. These are major apps.
- Pairs
- With
- Omiai
Above 3 appes are popular to find a partner. Some people use these to find future spouses.
Tinder and Tapple are popular especially for youngers. I had used Tapple before but I stopped using it because I felt many men wanted to one night stands.
There are apps for people who are more serious about marriage. “Zexy-enmusubi” is very famous. This app is run by Recruit company which owns “Indeed”.
Recently, some local governments try to support young ditizens to find spouses as one measure towards declining birthrate. In 2024, Tokyo launched it’s original dating app.
In my case
I met my fiance at a dating app “Omiai” after the COVID. I used it because I had no opportunity except my workplace and personally, I thought it was better to avoid be in relationship with a colleague.
I am very happy to meet him. My parents and his parents are also happy with us.
But some poeple in Japan still do not have bad impression towards dating apps. My boss said “I do not want to use dating apps” and teased the other colleague who had got married using a dating app. So I was hiding the existence of my boyfriend and how to meet him.
After coming to the U.S. I have heard that one of my colleague found a partner using a dating app. She taiked this openly and other colleagues said conguraturations to her. I felt cultural difference.
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