Are love and the marriage individual problems : Proposal of taking public support

摘要

In order to encourage young people to get married, recently a new term referred to as “konkatsu” has appeared in the Japanese society. Konkatsu is an abbreviated word for “kekon katsudo” which literally stand for “marriage activities”. Because of their social background there are still quite a number of young single people. Therefore, a tendency to marry late in life together with a declining birthrate are becoming social problems. For these reasons the government has come up with ‘childcare aid packages ‘which include further expansion of day care centers. This report points out that there is a strong relationship between a decline inbirth rate and konkatsu. Furthermore, the report also investigates the issues of love and marriage in depth and discusses matters related with them. It also suggests that love and marriage are not necessarily personal problems, but concern the whole society and, therefore, require public support.