Intimate Governance

Over the past several decades, the commercial dating market in Japan has expanded at an unprecedented pace. Running the gamut from dating apps to in-person matchmaking services that resemble traditional arranged marriage, dating services known as “marriage hunting” (konkatsu) promise to enable customers to find intimate relationships aligned with their individual values, personality traits, and lifestyle aspirations. At the same time, recognizing the importance of marriage as a precursor to childbearing, the Japanese government has earmarked funds for “marriage support” and begun collaborating with providers of dating services. In this talk, I conceptualize this alliance between the state and the market as intimate governance—a form of population management that instrumentalizes familial and affective ties between individuals for national goals. Drawing on evidence collected over twenty-seven months of fieldwork in Japan—including participant observation in marriage-support programs, 157 interviews with policymakers, service providers, and clients, and analysis of documentary evidence—I reveal how the dating industry extends state efforts to materialize desirable families. Intimate governance through the market promotes marriage and reproduction not through overt interventions, but by enabling individuals to realize what is framed as their own authentic desires.

Anna Woźny is a joint postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and Tokyo College. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Michigan and her BA in East Asian Studies from the University of Tokyo. Her research examines how political and economic forces shape experiences of intimacy, family, and reproduction in Japan as well as everyday practices of gender and sexuality. Her research appeared in Qualitative Sociology, Men and Masculinities, Signs, the American Sociological Review, and the Annual Review of Sociology and has been supported by fellowships and grants from Mellon/ACLS, JSPS, and the Japan Foundation, among others. She is currently completing her book about the Japanese dating industry entitled Marriage Hunting: Dating Markets, Intimate Governance and the Politics of National Decline in Japan.

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Host or Publisher Center for East Asian Studies