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The story
An article describing a case handled by a matchmaking agency counselor — a 40-year-old male member earning ¥5.5 million a year who applies for arranged meetings (o-miai) with 100 younger women every month, yet hasn’t landed a single match — went viral on 5channel’s News Speed+ board. Matchmaking-agency o-miai are said to easily screen candidates out based on profile income and education, and the more a man insists on a younger partner, the higher the income bar he’s expected to clear. The thread split between posters pointing out the mismatch between people’s conditions and real-world supply and demand, and others debating whether income or communication skill really determines how easy it is to get married.
Published 9/12 (Sat) 7:15 PM
President Online
What traits do men who go to matchmaking agencies but never manage to get married have in common? Yuko Oya, a counselor at the matchmaking agency she runs, says: “Men who insist on marrying a woman younger than themselves often end up missing their chance to marry. I have one member — a 40-year-old man earning ¥5.5 million a year — who applies for arranged meetings with 100 younger women every month, but still hasn’t managed to set up a single one.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
That's a real phenomenon too, but you won't touch it because it'd cause an uproar, right?
This is just sexist, ageist bullying dressed up as picking on middle-aged men.
Sure, it exists, but "oji-attack" (older men hitting on younger women) is way more common, so no analysis needed.
It's overwhelmingly men, because for most guys the wall of "I don't want young people to think I'm gross" is lower than their willingness to shrug and say "whatever, I've still got a young body."
Women, no matter their age, mostly don't want men to treat them like an old hag — they want to be treated like a princess — so they don't go after younger men (or can't) the way men go after younger women.
Is this article even true?
Something's gone wrong with these matchmaking agencies.
By 40 you're already halfway done, and earning ¥5.5 million at that age screams "high school grad."
Without assets, going for someone younger is a no-go — early 30s is off the table.
Do you really think a young girl looks at a 40-year-old geezer and thinks "handsome"?
For starters, if he's good-looking and still single at 40, there's probably a catch. If neither wants kids, husband-at-¥5.5-million-plus-wife-part-time isn't bad, but if the wife can't work part-time, there's no upside to marrying for either side (especially her).
If she's 39 or under, there's still a shot she wants kids, in which case even with dual income, ¥5.5 million from the husband is thin.
I figure it just makes men lose the will to get married.
"Will to get married" when you don't even have a partner?
What, you gonna marry an anime character?
But in reality it's all about money.
It's what decides whether the marriage goes cold or not.
Guys who go around saying "women be like…" never get married anyway, so this doesn't even apply to you.
I figure in about 20 years I'll die alone in some rundown house somewhere.
Isn't your income way too low for that much in assets?
Bet it's inherited from your parents.
You're not getting married on that.
Well, no woman wants to marry grandpa.
Even at ¥10 million a year, the real question is: how many more years can you actually keep that up?
But if you're so bad at talking and so short on connections that you need a matchmaking agency just to find someone, it's not happening.
Arranged meetings run on stats first, communication skills second.
If your stats are low, you don't even get in the ring.
Marriage comes down to being proactive.
Between a guy on ¥5 million who's smooth-talking and a guy on ¥10 million who's terrible at conversation, the former has a higher marriage rate.
This is about arranged meetings, though.
Also, guys who are all talk get avoided when it comes to actual marriage.
Matchmaking agencies run on "catalog stats" first.
At 40 with a ¥5 million income, you're getting cut at the document screening.
Marry a guy around 45.
Just pick from guys her own age to a bit older with similar income.
She'd have plenty of suitors among 50-year-old men earning ¥3 million.
At 40 she can still just barely have kids, right?
Because breasts start sagging from the late 30s.
Recovery from a late-life pregnancy is slower, and the odds of dying from a brain hemorrhage are higher too.
Could a man really handle raising a kid left behind on his own?
For a woman's first pregnancy at 40, natural conception is pretty rough.
Even with fertility treatment, maybe only 1 in 10 actually manages to give birth.
I'm fine being single for life at this point.
Having to grind through marriage-hunting like that — if you're already out of breath at the starting line, something's wrong.
Back in the day you didn't have to try that hard —
people around you would automatically bring you arranged-meeting offers.
Different era now, though.
Everyone just seems way too bloodshot-eyed about it these days.
Does it really need to be that intense?
Might be better to spend that money and effort a different way.
I don't think someone in their 40s could get married any other way.
Asking acquaintances for introductions, or looking for encounters through clubs or hobby classes, seems like it'd make you happier though.
It's a place where people who couldn't manage it any other way end up gathering.
That's what a matchmaking agency is.
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Among married people, 79% of men and 65% of women say they think, or have thought, "I'd have been better off single."
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Background and Key Points of This Debate
A matchmaking agency’s “o-miai” (arranged meeting) works on a system where both sides review each other’s profile beforehand and decide whether to accept, so candidates are easily screened out on quantifiable criteria like income and education. This article introduced the case of a male member for whom insisting on younger women kept raising the income bar he needed to clear, putting him at an ever-growing disadvantage on paper. Where the thread split was over whether income or communication skill really determines how easy it is to marry — some argued high income wins out even for a poor talker, while others insisted being proactive and good at conversation matters more. Worth noting is that matchmaking-agency matching tends to center on “catalog stats” like income — a quirk of the marriage-hunting market that the original article doesn’t dig into.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (News Speed+) thread “[Marriage Hunting] Four Years Younger Requires ¥10 Million, Eight Years Younger Requires ¥20 Million… The Misguided Assumptions of a 40-Year-Old Man Earning ¥5.5 Million Who Can’t Land a Single Arranged Meeting Despite Applying to 100 People a Month.”
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