The company TOBE recently bought out a matchmaking service in Hawaii that mainly matches Japanese women with American men, so to celebrate (?) conducted a survey into Japanese women’s views on foreign partners via their love and relationship web site https://aikatsu.jp.

These figures are quite higher than I might have expected, but given the survey being an open survey, I’m not sure how much weight we can put on the answers.

I doubt they’ll be getting many international weddings held here:





Research results

Q1: Would you like a foreign husband? (Sample size=737) Won’t consider anything else

15.2%

Would like if possible

55.4%

Wouldn’t like to

17.2%

Absolutely hate the idea

12.2%

Q2: Would you like a foreign lover? (Sample size=1,365) Want nothing but foreigners

11.9%

Proactively seek them out

37.7%

Would like to try once or so

38.9%

Would like to avoid it

5.9%

Absolutely do not want

5.6%

Q3: What would be toughest thing in an international marriage? (Sample size=746) Culture differences

24.3%

Language differences

13.4%

Getting on with his parents

12.1%

Troubles when married

9.9%

Marriage licence, resident permits, other procedures

9.2%

What to do about aged parents, other worries about the future

8.6%

My own old age life

8.3%

Would take a lot of money

7.4%

My parents wouldn’t understand

6.7%



Demographics

Three surveys were conducted as open surveys available through the aforementioned https://aikatu.jp web site, which is oriented towards women in their twenties and thirties, so hopefully most of the respondents were in that age range. Q1 was conducted between the 6th of October and 20th of November 2017, Q2 between the 16th of October and the 20th of November 2017, and Q3 between the 27th of October and the 20th of November 2017.