All images by Zachary Tang unless otherwise stated.

Two months ago, Destini International Services, a Japanese matchmaking agency that mainly aims to match Singaporean men with Japanese women launched in Singapore.

With Japanese women commonly thought of as the epitome of feminine subservience, the possibility of snagging a beautiful, obedient girlfriend set forums like Sammyboy and Hardwarezone—hotbeds of Singaporean misogyny—alight. Elsewhere, news broke that water is wet.

If you’ve had the distinct displeasure of trawling these forums, you’ll find adjectives like “fierce”, “willful”, and “vocal” commonly used by these dudes to describe their Singaporean, female counterparts. And they don’t mean this in a good way.

To them, relationships are about power and they like to dominate. A headstrong woman is, therefore, a useless woman. Significant others should look pretty, sit down, and shut up. Just like how, because of clichés in popular culture, many might assume Japanese women behave.

Often, these men’s romantic preferences results in their love lives being woefully unfulfilled. In this day and age—in which feminism and female representation are strong pillars of society—finding a Singaporean woman willing to blindly obey has become virtually impossible (not a bad thing, of course).

When I first heard about Destini and the services offered, I was more than a little sceptical. Not that I’m against matchmaking or cross-cultural marriage, but something about it just felt a little … off.

It seemed to reek of opportunism: Destini gets the cash and these guys get to bring their fantasies to life. Almost as though Destini was encouraging a very specific, prevalent stereotype of Japanese (or even Asian) women.

Would Destini even try to keep the women safe? What were the “comprehensive tests” and “omiai” they spoke of? How did It all work?

I knew I had to dig deeper for answers.