Departments
KURISUMASU KEEKI
クリスマスケーキ
"Christmas Cake"
In Japan, confectionaries and bakeries sell cakes made especially for the Christmas holiday (which is celebrated as a secular holiday in largely Buddhist Japan). The Christmas Cakes that don’t sell by the twenty-fifth of December are either discarded or sold as at a discount, as they are now “past their prime.”
The stale Christmas cake is a traditional Japanese metaphor for an unmarried woman past the age of twenty-five. Through the mid-1980s, Japanese women believed that they had to marry by the age of twenty-five, or they would be doomed to become lonely old maids. In 1970, only 18 percent of Japanese women over the age of 27 were still single.
This mindset has changed in recent years, though; and the average Japanese woman is remaining single even longer than her American counterparts. By 1990, over 40 percent of Japanese women in their late twenties had not yet tied the knot. By 2004, the number of never married women in the 25-29 age group had shot up to 54 percent (compared to only 40 percent in the United States.)
Almost everyone agrees that Japanese women are deliberately choosing to delay (or even forgo) marriage. A poll conducted by the Japan Institute of Life Insurance found that about half of Japanese single women between the ages of 35 and 54 have no intention to marry—ever.
Reactions to the New Trends
In tradition-bound Japan, this trend has caused shockwaves in the media and halls of government. The trend also has a very real effect on the nation’s demographics. Marriage rates are directly tied to fertility, and Japan’s current birth rate of 1.29 children per woman is too low to sustain the current population. Beginning in 2006, the number of deaths in Japan will exceed the number of births for the first time, and the population will begin to decrease. This has made the powers-that-be positively flustered at the women who deliberately eschew marriage and family.
According to government polls, the women themselves blame the difficulty of childrearing and ossified male attitudes for their unwillingness to marry. A recent survey revealed that Japanese men spend less than 10 minutes per day assisting their wives with housework and childrearing tasks. After marriage, the woman is still more or less expected to quit her job and become a fulltime homemaker.
Of course, there are dissenting opinions in regard to this point. Some commentators have suggested that it the Japanese housewife who enjoys the benefits of marriage. Modern household conveniences have made housework less arduous than it was a generation ago; and lower birthrates have made childrearing less of a burden. As a result, many married women enjoy unprecedented amounts of free time to pursue hobbies and personal interests. The Japanese husband, meanwhile, has to spend long hours working in a corporate office.
In either case, it is clear that the term “Christmas Cake” has become an anachronism in less than twenty years. Henceforth, the word will likely apply only to pastries.