On 22 April 2024, the Itatsu Lab, with the support of ITASIA Program, will be organizing a lecture titled “Marriage-hunting: Marriage ‘Markets’ and the Rationalization of Intimacy in Contemporary Japan.”
Time April 22 (Mon) 2024, 13:00 – 14:30 JST
Venue Room 92B, 9th floor, Engineering Bldg. 2 Hongo Campus, University of Tokyo
Format In-person only; no registration required
Language English
Inquiries Itatsu.lab@gmail.com
Organized by Itatsu Lab, supported by ITASIA Program
LECTURE DESCRIPTION
The stratospheric rise of new dating technologies and services – from dating apps to group dating events – is transforming the ways people meet their partners and understand their intimate experiences in Japan. Termed “marriage-hunting” (konkatsu), after the Japanese word for job-hunting (shūkatsu), these services require that individuals approach finding a spouse in a manner similar to securing quality employment in an increasingly competitive, unequal, and precarious labor market. In this talk, I explore these parallels by showing how participation in the marriage-hunting market renders the search for intimacy a rational, calculated pursuit. The market logic of marriage-hunting compels individuals to look for partners based on rigid, gendered criteria and to calibrate their expectations of intimate relationships relative to their social location. By elucidating these cultural logics of marriageability, this talk illuminates the linkages between commodification of intimacy and the shifting political economy in Japan.
LECTURER BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Anna Woźny
Anna Woźny is a joint postdoctoral fellow at Tokyo College and Princeton University. She received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Michigan in 2023. Her research focuses on contemporary Japanese society and analyzes how changes in the political economy shape and are shaped by the shiing conceptions of gender and family. Her research on marriage-hunting was supported by the ACLS/Mellon Foundation and the Japan Foundation. An article based on this research was published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Marriage-hunting: Markets, Morals and Marriageability in Contemporary Japan.
YUKO ITATSU LABORATORY, THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO 
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