Lessons from an International Marriage in Japan: Personal Edition

I am happy to announce that after several months of dating and living together, I have recently decided to submit the required documentation to officially register my marriage to my wife in Japan. Given my previous jealousy toward the same woman's professional success, for us to come this long way so quickly was as surprising to our parents, relatives, and friends, as it was, in some ways, to ourselves. With COVID still raging on, the decidedly low-key affair, without an elaborate proposal, wedding, or honeymoon, is markedly by an unremarkable sense of smoothness and nonchalance among all parties involved.

That said, the process itself was still fraught with plenty of hurdles, navigating the bureaucratic process of registration, the skeptical social expectations of family members, and the idiosyncrasies of an international marriage, often peculiar to Japan. All these obstacles are no doubt a source of very practical learning for the newlyweds. Given that (hopefully) most people only go through the marriage process once in their lifetimes, our learning from this affair can provide some interesting knowledge about how an international marriage works in a still COVID-obsessed Japan of 2022.

The first lesson remains the most timeless: do not underestimate the power of cultural gaps in international marriages. As much as people would like to think that marriage is between two people who are capable of compromising on their lifestyles, beliefs, and core values, two people finding a personal balance still take place within a social context that sees international marriage as decidedly rare. In a largely homogenous Japan with relatively few foreign residents and even fewer foreigners getting married to locals, cultural differences are glossed over by the general public, if not by the newlyweds.

The result is plenty of almost tone-deaf questions when it comes to others questioning the very validity of a Japanese national getting married to a foreigner. Japanese parents, who spent their entire lives in the Japanese isles, complain about the lack of information (and indeed, social knowledge) associated with foreigners, their countries, and their relationship with Japan. For long-time foreign residents of the country, the distance between them and the locals is real and expected, but still hits too close to home when the subject is a marriage to a local.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the distance real people displayed is mirrored in the distance government bureaucracies have shown in the entire affair. Registering the marriage required the US Embassy to issue proof of singlehood, something that the staff members did without hesitance, doing so with just a quick scan of the passport, payment, and a few words of congratulations. The Japanese government offices were equally terse, treating the whole affair as a chance for updating residency records while merely insisting that the couple get the same last name and officially register to be under the same household.

The dual emotional and bureaucratic distances of getting married as an international couple in Japan, then, may speak to just how the country and its people, despite the rarity, are actually quite ready to accept the practice as commonplace. Sure, plenty of suspicions arise from the intent and stability of getting hitched with a foreigner, but at no point in the process was any obstacle big enough to derail the marriage itself and force a rethink on its viability. Plenty question the marriage, but no one cared enough to put a halt to it in a sustained, forceful way.

This lack of real obstacles may speak to the nature of human relations in the COVID era. People are less likely to meet new people and become intimate with them, for a lack of opportunities to do so and a genuine fear of getting infected. Yet, prolonged social isolation only increases the yearning for meeting someone new and falling in love with them. COVID might have made people more willing to concede that the benefits of finding romantic partners as an output in itself much outweigh the potential downsides of sociocultural incapabilities. The lack of opportunities to meet new people means every single one is more cherished.

Does it mean that, as COVID blows over, more people will question international marriages more deeply once again? It probably depends on how much pent-up demand there is for people crossing borders to seek out new lives. More than two years of forced domesticity may have made the prospects of international marriages more desirable, acceptable, and attractive. If more people do take up dreams of foreign residence that they put off for more than two years when COVID does blow over, changing social mores toward international marriage may come to match the reality of more global romantic pairings.