[quote]Cortes wrote:
The experiences of about a thousand Japanese women I am aware of do not reflect what you are saying.
By and large, the situation you describe is exactly what Japanese females are moving away from when they choose Western men. And trust me, their families are usually NOT happy about this decision, so it’s not as if it’s something they are exactly forced into. There’s actually still an arranged marriage system here, that is typically only employed when a female has passed her “marriageable” age. There is enormous pressure for Japanese of both sexes and all classes to conform. ENORMOUS pressure. And marrying Western men is about as non-conformist an act as can be performed here. Typically, the reason Japanese women marry Western men is because the men are warm, caring, chivalrous in the old Western sense of the word, help out around the house and willingly take part in family life, are fun to hang out with, listen and act upon what they hear, and in general are just more “there.” I can tell you from DIRECT experience, and anyone who has spent more than three months in Japan will back me up on this, Japanese men tend to be emotionally withdrawn from their families. They may not be domineering, but they are sure as hell not supportive. My business is teaching kids, and when signing up a new student, in 90% of the cases, that’s not an inflated figure, I will deal with the mother and never meet the father before that family makes the decision to invest thousands of dollars and the most important learning period of their children’s lives with us.
And I may be biased, but since I have direct, firsthand experience with literally hundreds more Western Male/Japanese Female relationships than you do, literally thousands when we start to consider the typical Japanese families, I think I’ll go ahead and hang on to my crazy notions and not be swayed to the other side just yet.
Finally, anybody who thinks I “dominate” my wife has not met her. There is a familial hierarchy there, for sure, but if you want to run a successful business serving hundreds of students and affecting thousands of members of your community and year after year be recognized as the top school in field (my student won first place in the All Japan National Speech Contest here last year, I am proud to say), you don’t get to that point by tyrannizing your business partner.
At every level, this conversation is about giving people what they want. What they actually want. Not what they say they do.
*edited: typos
[/quote]
Well, Cortes, I’m glad you know thousands and thousands western-Japanese couples and you have a deep insight of their relationships. Yes, maybe you may be biased, maybe what you’d probably consider as a non-domineering/ controlling- submissive couple may not be what would appear to someone else.
Anyway, I stand by what I’ve heard and seen and, will reiterate, American women have no hate for Japanese women.
