In Japan a taboo is being broken: men are starting to marry older women

TokyoIn one out of every four couples getting married for the first time in Japan, the woman is older than the man. In 2024, these marriages represented 25.5% of the total, the highest percentage recorded to date and more than double that of the seventies, when they hovered around 10%. Among couples, older men remain the majority, but the age difference between spouses has narrowed. Even so, in many cases, the distance is small: the woman is only one or two years older than her husband.

Sociologist Masahiro Yamada, a professor at Chuo University and a specialist in family sociology, attributes part of this change to the loss of weight of prejudices regarding age. In an interview published in local media, Yamada detailed that the age difference between people getting married for the first time is 1.4 years on average. "The psychological barriers to marrying an older woman have been weakening," asserts Yamada, who considers this evolution positive because it expands the possibilities of forming a couple. Yamada is known for coining the term konkatsu, which in Japan designates the active search for a partner with the intention of getting married.

This age difference can also influence coexistence, especially in the distribution of domestic tasks and child-rearing. Yamada recalls the case of a makeup artist and hairdresser he had met on a program who was married to a man seven years younger. According to her explanation, her husband listened to her easily, and this made life together simpler. The sociologist considers that, in some cases, age can modify the way men receive requests from their partners. Although the idea persists that the man should take the initiative, social conventions that associate age with experience and respect can favor a more receptive attitude toward an older woman.

Yamada also points out that the growing importance of cosmetics, skincare, and fashion makes it easier for many women to maintain an appearance that was previously associated primarily with youth. But he does not attribute it all to image: the fact of continuing to work and developing a professional career can also reinforce confidence and autonomy. According to the sociologist, physical appearance continues to have an important weight in male preferences when looking for a partner, but the range of ages of women who fit these criteria has expanded.

Economic pressure

Economic pressure has also changed expectations about marriage. In Tokyo, the cost of housing and daily life makes it difficult to support a family on a single salary. "Working hard as a salaryman no longer guarantees that your salary will increase much," explains Yamada.

According to the sociologist, this reality has weakened the pressure that men traditionally felt to support the entire family. Among the youngest, it is increasingly common to value that a partner has their own income, even one higher than their own. For decades, the usual model reserved full-time work for the man and left the woman with a part-time job, often lower paid. This scheme still conditions the expectations of many couples.

The National Survey on Marriage and Fertility in Japan, conducted in 2021, already pointed in this direction: 48.2% of single men considered important or took into account the economic capacity of their future partner, compared to 41.9% in the previous survey. Among women, 70.2% valued the skills and willingness of men to take on domestic tasks and childcare, compared to 57.7% previously. The increase is more pronounced among women: the proportion that values the willingness of men to assume these responsibilities has grown by 12.5 points, almost double that which places importance on the economic capacity of the partner among men.

But just because expectations change does not mean that responsibilities are shared equally. In the survey on domestic tasks and childcare that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government published in 2025, men surveyed with children of preschool age dedicated an average of 3 hours and 29 minutes a day to it, between housework, childcare, and caregiving. Among women, the average was 7 hours and 48 minutes. The difference had been reduced by more than an hour compared to 2023, but it still exceeded four hours a day.

Yamada argues that couples must build a relationship based on respect and cooperation, without being conditioned by the age difference or by the traditional division of family roles. That in one out of every four couples marrying for the first time the woman is older does not mean that inequalities have disappeared. Age weighs less in the choice of a partner, but the distribution of housework and childcare still does not fully reflect this change.