Family Law

Japan Sees a Surge in Divorce Ceremonies

By ckramer

The ceremony may have looked familiar, as friends and loved ones gathered around Saori Teshima and her husband to celebrate a monumental life change. But this wasn?t a wedding. When the ring was displayed, the pair weren?t joined, but separated. They took up a hammer and smashed the ring to bits, completing what is becoming more common in Japan: the divorce ceremony.

Teshima?s marriage was ending in divorce after five years, and the couple decided on the increasingly popular divorce ritual as a way to end their union with the same gusto that marked its beginning, according to an article in the Telegraph.

In these ceremonies, spreading across Japan, couples raise toasts to never having to see each other again, and they take symbolic rides in separate rickshaws to symbolize the new journeys that they will begin alone. As a wedding symbolically represents the union of two people, these divorce ceremonies use a series of gestures that signify the split itself.

There were over 250,000 divorces in Japan in 2008, which experts blame on a down economic climate and the end of an era when salarymen led the conventional family unit and provided the foundation of many aspects of life in Japan.

The divorce ceremonies come at a time when divorce still has a stigma attached to it. They serve to make the divorce agreement public and formal, in a manner that friends and family will find acceptable.

Entrepreneur Hiroki Terai is one founder of the idea of a public divorce ceremony. He came up with the idea when some friends of his had decided to split.

?A ceremony at the end of marriage gives the couple and their friends and family the opportunity to gain emotional closure,? said Terai of his invention.

Since that first ceremony, he has started a company that arranges divorce ceremonies exclusively. He has conducted 21 ceremonies since March, and over 700 people have contacted him about them.

According to Terai, ?couples ranging from 21 to 57 have taken part in ceremonies so far. Some wear white dresses, a few opt for cakes, and it?s always very moving.?

Roland Kelts, a Japanese cultural critic at the University of Tokyo, told the Telegraph that the divorce ceremonies were a way for people to adjust to changing family structures in the culture. He cited more worldly family members who found themselves comparing their marriages to wider cultural markers, and the change that comes when men are no longer guaranteed employment security for their entire lives.

Terai, meanwhile, maintains his emotional view of the events that he organizes: ?Everyone deserves a fresh new start,? he said. ?Two couples actually decided to stay together after the ceremony because it made them realize how much they still cared.?

It?s unclear when these couples made the decision, whether it was during the formal exchange of greetings, or the separate rickshaw drives to Terai?s Divorce Mansion, where the couple play out the symbolic reverse of the trip down to the courthouse.

Aoyama Tsuyoshi, a guest at a recent divorce ceremony, said, ?I thought it was a joke when I first received the invitation.?

Full post as published by The Divorce Blog on June 30, 2010 (boomark / email).