Miai - Gender and Miai

Gender and Miai

Although current rates of miai marriages are fairly low, the persistence of miai in modern Japanese society can be explained by examining gender relationships. As discussed earlier, people who are past marriageable age, tekireiki, are more likely to use the miai process. The idea of the cutoff age is taken quite seriously. There is a tendency for women who remain unmarried past tekireiki to be treated as inferior and compared to Japanese Christmas cake, fresh up until the twenty-fifth but on each succeeding day the cake becomes less appetizing. A newer expression replaces Christmas cake with toshikoshisoba, or a dish of noodles to see out the year on the thirty-first.

Males seem to possess only a bit more latitude. A man who does not marry by about 30 is considered untrustworthy by colleagues and employers, who believe that such men have not been conditioned to learn the fundamental principles of co-operation and responsibility. For males, marriage also makes an implicit statement about staying in the family business. Males who engage in miai often occupy dominant roles within the marriage. Miai marriage has been criticized for promoting patriarchal relationships with traditional power structures and distinct divisions of labor between males and females.