April 25, 2007
A defining characteristic of modern life is how much you can do without leaving the house: You can work, bank, buy groceries, and even shop for a new home without setting foot outside your present one.
And now in Japan, you can add "find a mate" to the list.
There, elderly women go door-to-door, armed with pictures of local single people, hoping to set them up with other local singles.
What makes these women different from traditional matchmakers or contemporary dating services is that the singles have not solicited their assistance. As Reuters put it, the two hundred members of an older women's group in Fukui prefecture—Japan's equivalent of a state—are "proud to be busybody matchmakers."
Make that "government-sanctioned busybody matchmakers": The group is subsidized by the prefecture's government. Last year, it helped "50 couples tie the knot" and helped make the prefecture the only one of Japan's forty-seven prefectures to see a rise in its birth rate.
Then again, rise is a relative term: Even after aggressive measures like this one, Fukui's birth rate is far below replacement level...
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