Masks and marriage: match-making in a faceless Japan

One of the most lasting of Japan’s many self-inflicted wounds during the Covid-19 Pandemic is likely to be the drop in marriages caused the population’s willingness to go along with instructions to not socialise or show their faces. Tokyo University researchers estimated that 166,000 fewer marriages occurred in 2020-2022 “due to Covid.”¹

Luckily for marriage-minded singletons, Japan has various companies that offer marriage match-making services. But unluckily for non-Covidian men, many of the women using these services seem to be the Japanese version of Covid Karen, who I’ll call Corona Masuko. Whereas Covid Karen is usually a hysterical liberal, Corona Masuko tends to be socially conservative and priggishly concerned with correct etiquette. She’s also more prevalent and persistent. Even now, over half of Japanese women report feeling stress when seeing unmasked people indoors.

In a recent survey of 70 staff members of marriage match-making services, 67.1% reported that they knew of cases where the issue of mask wearing had been a deal-breaker.

Reasons for women turning down male suitors included the following: “He was talking while his mask was hanging off one ear.” “As soon as he entered the cafe, he unmasked and started talking.” “There was lint on his mask.” “His mask wasn’t a medical-grade one.” “His mask was the wrong size.” In consultations, I tell men that women watch for cleanliness and manners.

One of the most grating phrases in Covid-era Japan was “Masks are manners.” As I’ve written about before, the government expertly exploited positive aspects of the Japanese (in this case, their politeness) to make up for constitutional restrictions on its ability to mandate actions (e.g., universal masking was maintained based on oppressive peer-pressure not legal obligations).

That said, not all the complaints were unreasonable.

One suitor was turned down for wearing a unique style of mask (it had a camouflage pattern) because the other party thought it showed a difference in values and interests.

One women turned down a man because “His mask was dirty.”

Fair enough. If you must wear a mask, at least make the effort to wear one that isn’t dumb or dirty.

But for Corona Masuko, the only thing worse than bad masking is unmasking.

One man waited with his mask off since the two parties hadn’t met face-to-face yet [i.e., to make it easier for the women to find him], but his intention didn’t get through to the women, so she turned him down.

One man was turned down after a couple’s first meal together because he kept talking unmasked even after he’d finished eating.

One man was turned down because he talked unmasked in a crowded cafe without a partition on the table.

A man was turned down because he made a woman uncomfortable by asking “I don’t know what you look like, so could you take your mask off?”

But don’t despair, dear reader. If Corona Masuko looks hard enough, she can find a faceless prince among the barefaced men.

Women highly rated men who said “Pardon me” before taking off their mask to drink. There were cases of couples getting married.

Never has a happy ending made me feel more despondent.

One survey respondent summed up the difficulties of match-making during the Covid era.

During the corona crisis, ways of thinking about masks, vaccinations, and staying home are often seen as differences in values, and I think there were many cases where people decided “No” at the time of match-making meetings or on the first date.

I guess one upside of Covid is that knowing a potential partner’s views on masks and jabs enables you to make a faster decision about entering into a relationship with them. But Japanese people who think that masks, vaccinations, and staying home were necessary and beneficial do so due to uncritical acceptance of media reporting that praised those who treated others like biohazards and stigmatised those that didn’t. And as the data and anecdotes above show, making it a faux pas to uncover one’s face greatly interferes with necessary social functioning like family formation.

The downstream effects are predicable. Because births rarely happen outside of marriage in Japan (or anywhere else in Northeast Asia), the Tokyo Uni researchers mentioned above estimate there will be 255,000 fewer children born as a result of fewer marriages in 2020-2022. Put simply, Japan’s “infection prevention measures” didn’t just make the lives of current children miserable but also made the number of future children smaller.

Ironically, after creating and maintaining this situation for over three years, the government of PM Fumio Kishida is now attempting to tackle Japan’s low birth rate.

"Japan is standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society," Mr Kishida told lawmakers.

He said that he eventually wants the government to double its spending on child-related programmes. A new government agency to focus on the issue would be set up in April, he added.

So now PM Kishda cares about social functioning and child welfare! Of course, the Japanese were deep in the hole of demographic decline before Covid. But I doubt that politicians who managed to make the hole even deeper will be able to help them climb out, especially when the same politicians say they’ll pick up the shovel again at the soonest opportunity.

Japan's plans for the next pandemic: same again but faster!

1. The researchers used data up to June 2022, but their mid-point (orange) estimate for the whole of 2022 turned out to be pretty accurate.