The problems of "non-love, non-marriage, and infertility" in Japanese society have led to the increasingly serious problem of "declining birthrate". According to the latest data released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, only 758,631 newborns were born in Japan in 2023, a decrease of 5.1% from 2022 and the fewest post-war birth record. The number of marriages in Japan also fell below 500,000, the lowest number in the post-war period. The lifetime fertility rate of women of childbearing age in Japan is only 1.2, which means that the average lifetime child is only 1.2.
Japanese women are reluctant to fall in love, get married, or even have children, both due to changes in life values and economic reasons.
There are two cities in Japan where women are most reluctant to get married, one is Tokyo and the other is Kyoto. Tokyo is still easy to understand, because there are too many white-collar workers and the atmosphere of life in the new era is too strong, resulting in a large number of "white bone spirit" women, and single aristocrats can be met everywhere. However, Kyoto is a local city after all, so why is it also affected by the "three noes"?
Let's take a look at the characteristics of women in Kyoto, which can be summarized in five basic points:
1. Educated
2. Gentle and elegant personality
3. Very organized for the management of family and housework
4. Work calmly and elegantly
5. It has an indescribable mysterious charm
One side of the water and soil raises the other side, and the women cultivated in the thousand-year-old capital are different after all. The question is, who can be worthy of such a woman?
Therefore, it is difficult for women in Kyoto to find a partner, not because their conditions are not good, but because they are too good, which scares away many men.
Just because Japanese women don't get married doesn't mean they don't want to be mothers.
Recently, the phenomenon of "egg freezing" has quietly become popular in Japanese society, and this topic even surpasses stem cells.
Many unmarried older women have their eggs frozen by a medical institution in order to have their own children born through IVF in the future, due to the aging of their eggs or the difficulty of having children due to cancer.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun on the issue of "egg freezing", 72% of women expressed interest in "egg freezing" on the grounds that "they have not yet found a suitable marriage partner" and "they are still considering career first".
Currently, there are 617 medical institutions registered with the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology that can perform IVF.
Miss Nakazawa, a 35-year-old flight attendant at an airline, has frozen 16 of her own eggs at a medical facility. "I don't have a boyfriend yet, so it's impossible to think about getting married and having children right away," she said. But if it goes on like this, I don't know what the future will be like without my own children? Therefore, whether to get married or not is another matter, first freeze your young eggs. ”
There are many "white bone spirit" women who think the same way as Miss Nakazawa, and there are many big cities in Japan. As a result, the number of egg freezing institutions in Japan is also increasing, and according to a survey conducted in 2023 by the Child Care Support Division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Welfare Bureau, there are 104 registered egg freezing institutions in Tokyo, and the number is increasing rapidly.
In a survey of 4,567 women who had "egg freezing", the proportion of egg collection age for these women was 2.4% for those aged 25-29, 13.9% for those aged 30-34, 45.4% for those aged 35-39, 20.1% for those aged 40-44, and 2.3% for those aged 45-49.
It can be seen that women between the ages of 35 and 44 account for the largest proportion, reaching more than 65%.
So, how much does "egg freezing" cost?
In 2023, a medical institution in Yokohama performed two egg collection surgeries on a woman who applied for egg freezing, 10 in May and 6 in September, and the total cost of the two surgeries plus the four-year storage period was 1.4 million yen (about 65,000 yuan).
For the average woman, this is also a large expense, so how to implement financial assistance for women who "freeze their eggs"? It is also a major issue that is currently being discussed by the Japanese government and society.
"How do we, who are in the middle of the ever-changing society and the unchanging body, face our life and future? Wandering is fruitless, you can only save yourself. This is a sentence that Miss Nakazawa left for me on LINE, and it has a sense of tragedy.