Although Japan's unmarried population has risen steeply in the last few years, and its birth-rate declined (possibly as a result of increased wealth and dedication by both sexes to career), the last year has witnessed the creation of a new movement: konkatsu, or "marriage-hunting." The term is a literal adaptation of "job-hunting," and the process is not dissimilar.

While the raft of new matchmaking services and sites are not unfamiliar, and matchmaking is as old as time, the pragmatic, modern, businesslike approach - and cultural embrace of the phenomenon - are. Basically, "marriage-hunting" employs the methodology of a successful job hunt. Konkatsu@net, a marriage-hunt site, explains the approach, as translated by Global Voices, thusly:

During a ‘job hunting' period, it's not only important to have contacts with the company you want to work for participating to its ‘company explanatory meeting' and interviews....In the same way, ‘marriage hunting' consists of many different activities.Men will ‘train their body', ‘improve their taste in choosing clothes', ‘increase the number of subjects to talk about' and ‘go to aesthetic salons'. Also women will ‘have aesthetic treatments for body and nails' and ‘learn how to cook'. All these measures are considered necessary to konkatsu. However, the most important thing is ‘increasing the number of opportunities to meet people'.

This particularly straightforward approach is, some feel, the result of a paradigm shift. Explains the maker of that forementioned bra, "Japanese women are becoming more aggressive than men, working actively to make marriage happen, whereas in the past it was men who led women toward marriage." And "aggressive" new women are the target demographic for the terrifying konkatsu bra, lingerie worthy of a regressive Bond villainess. We couldn't have made this up - nor would we have wished to:

Triumph's latest novelty bra features an electronic nuptial timepiece, putting women seeking spouses literally on the clock. If an engagement ring is inserted into the mechanism, the countdown stops and the bra plays Felix Mendelssohn's "The Wedding March." The bra also includes holders for the traditional seal some people use to sign off contracts and a pen for any possible nuptial agreement.

If this is the armor of female empowerment, well, we're doin it rong. One older lady objects to husband-hunting on more romantic grounds, writing on the Konkatsu message board,

They have got to take interviews and exams to meet their partner? They have to dress up to pretend like good person?
The people who make up these new words must have a plot. They try young people to feel rushed to get married and persuade to join the marriage agencies [ja]! Don't be deceived, ladies and gentlemen! Don't be rushed and don't fake yourself!

Japan: Marriage Hunting! [Global Voices]
Japan bra maker offers support for husband hunters [Reuters]

Choi Young-hee's decision to become a yenta may have sprung from her own difficulty in meeting someone after defecting from North Korea, but clearly she's no starry-eyed romantic; having survived a year in a Mongolian prison, she says starting a business was easy, and she saw a gap in the cross-peninsula dating market. Her business, South Korean Man-North Korean Woman Marriage Consulting, is named for a legend that South Korean men are handsome, North Korean women beautiful. Clearly, Choi does not shy away from stereotypes or generalizations; says a profile in the Los Angeles Times,

South Korean men are charmers, full of sweet talk, she says. But some overdo the cheesy compliments. Yet even at their worst, she says, they make better mates than North Korean men."North Koreans are hard men of few words. They don't have as much consideration for a woman."Some South Korean men have decided they want North Korean wives, who favor more traditional values. In many cases, their parents were displaced from the North during the Korean War, and they relate more to the culture there.North Korean women are also seen as exotic yet still Korean.

As seems to be fairly standard and depressing in such setups, Choi's client list has a 3:1 ratio of women to men. She provides the service free to North Korean women, presumably to spare them the difficulty she went through as en emigree on the dating scene. Says she, "Nothing is more important for us than marriage to settle down in South Korea. It is a turning point to start a new life." There's clearly a strong vein of pragmatism to the setup, and Choi admits that in a couple of cases women have used men they met for money, then vanished, while one guy promised a woman marriage, slept with her, then demanded a refund. South Korea only recently changed the laws to allow emigres to divorce their spouses, still up north, in absentia, and clearly for a lot of people the idea of a "new life" is quite a literal one.

It's interesting to contrast the pragmatism of Choi's business with the raft of matchmakers pop culture has given us in the last couple of years. While we are fed pragmatism glossed with romance, a setup like Choi's seems to strip the business down to its essentials, and if romance blooms, well, that's a nice benefit. Korean culture is, traditionally, one of arranged marriages, particularly in rural areas, so the notion of matchmaking does not have the stigma of desperation or sadness that it does here. And if it is based on generalizations, well, one can only assume that the realities of cross-peninsular marriages will do more to offset this, ironically, than anything else possibly could.

South Korean Matchmaker Found Her Date With Destiny [Los Angeles Times]

Writer Curtis Sittenfeld is a terrible, but indefatigable, matchmaker. As she puts it, "I've tried to set up nearly a dozen couples, and with one notable exception, it's never worked. I've unsuccessfully introduced straight and gay people, old friends and new acquaintances, but the one thing they almost all have in common is an apparent aversion to each other." She identifies two reasons why she can't stop trying. For one, she's a hopeless romantic. For another, she wants to be in on the drama.

when you introduce two people, you're immediately creating a story, and I love stories. Think about it: Whether or not the two people like each other, you're putting a plot in motion. Either the couple does get along, and that plot continues and expands, or they don't and the plot quickly ends. In a best-case scenario, the two people fall madly in love and there's a wedding, which, as any reader of Jane Austen knows, is the best possible way for all plots to conclude. Alas, this doesn't happen 99 percent of the time, but still, the two people involved — and by extension, I — get to enjoy the questions and tensions that arise as the plot unfolds: Where and when will they decide to meet? Will they like each other? Will one like the other more?

Sittenfeld's matchmaking misadventures make for a funny read, but for any of us who have tried to play Emma, there's also the uncomfortable knowledge that the act of matchmaking isn't purely altruistic: there's an element of control involved that smacks of ego. On some level, don't we want to be the one to have arranged things - and by extension, isn't there often a bit of irrational resentment when things don't work out? You're perfect for each other! Why won't you do as you're supposed to! my petty subconscious might shout on those occasions when I was unwise enough to attempt connecting friends. In my case, too, I came to recognize that my attempts at meddling with my friends' love lives was a way of avoiding my own - I far preferred being an asexual fairy godmother to the heroine in my own narrative, to use Sittenfeld's analogy.

And having been on the other end, in some ways being a friend's pawn can be deeply uncomfortable; while it's nice to have someone looking out for you, and great to have someone trusted vetting people for you, it can lead to all kinds of bad feeling. Seriously? you are sometimes left thinking. This is who you think I am? Do you know me at all? Breaking the news to the macher in these cases is not fun. Not to mention the universal dislike of being patronized by those friends in relationships. And the less said about the loathsome Millionaire Matchmaker, the better.

But of course, a success story means it's all worth it. My dad, amongst other claims (chief amongst them allegedly having invented the "what's hot, what's not" list) says he has been responsible for no fewer than four enduring marriages. Now that I think of it, several of my male friends have brokered successful relationships (although it should be said the "matchmaking" seems to have sometimes taken the form of, "dude, if you don't make a move, I will" type goading rather than subtle foursome dinners.) Tons of couples meet through friends one way or another, and when mutual interest has been expressed, it's deeply satisfying to put two people in touch. But the fact remains that some of us just aren't born with the successful matchmaking gene, and for the good of our social lives, like Sittenfeld, we've got to know when to cut our losses and rewatch Clueless.

I Know Just The Person For You! [Salon]