Recently, the results of a survey on the current situation of Japanese marriage have triggered a heated discussion and discussion in the society. The survey shows that the cheating rate of Japanese women is close to 50%.
This data has undoubtedly had a certain impact on traditional marriage concepts, and has also caused more speculation and attention to the outside world on family concepts and gender roles in Japanese society.
Even more remarkable is the fact that many Japanese men have chosen to ignore their wives in the face of their betrayal, and what social and cultural factors are hidden behind this?
Japanese marriage consultancy “松本清张研究所” A survey data released in 2023 broke the outside world's inherent perception of Japanese traditional family culture: the cheating rate of married women in the country is as high as 49.2%, which means that almost one in every two wives has had an extramarital affair.
What is even more surprising is that among husbands who knew that their wives were cheating, more than 68% chose to "acquiesce" and neither filed for divorce nor confronted their wives. Behind this abnormal calm lies the structure of Japanese society and Deep changes in the concept of marriage.
The heavy lockdown of economic costs is the first realistic consideration of many husbands choosing silence.In Japan, the financial stress of divorce often makes it difficult for men to endure.
According to the statistics of the Japanese Ministry of Health and Labour in 2022, after the divorce of a couple in the Tokyo area, the maintenance and property sharing costs paid by men averaged 8.4 million yen (approximately RMB 43 million). If the wife is a full-time housewife, the husband will also have to bear the living allowance for subsequent years.
For a large number of men engaged in informal work, such a burden is sufficient to overwhelm their personal finances— The 35-year-old IT practitioner, who earned only 2.8 million yen (about 14.4 million yuan) a year, said in an interview with the Japanese newspaper, “It is tired to maintain the status quo, and I can’t think about divorce at all.”
More realistically, there is hidden discrimination against divorced men in the Japanese workplace, and some enterprises will use "family stability" as a reference index in promotion evaluation, which makes many men have to weigh the occupational risks of divorce.
The alienation of marriage function is dissolving the emotional foundation of the traditional relationship between husband and wife. As the characteristics of "low-desire society" become more and more obvious in Japan, more and more marriages have become "functional communities" rather than unions based on love.
The 2021 "16th Basic Survey on Birth Trends" of Japan's National Institute of social protection and Demographic Issues (IPSS) shows that 17.3% of unmarried men aged 18 to 34 said they are "not interested at all" in dating, compared with 14.6% for women.
This emotional indifference extends to marriage and gives rise to new relationship patterns such as “friendly marriage” — data from Tokyo’s Friendship Marriage Consulting Institute “Colorus” show that from its inception in 2015 until April 2025, the institution has contributed 324 couples to a love-free, non-sexual marriage, with 85% of participants holding a bachelor’s degree and earning more than the national average.
In this type of marriage, couples are more like "comrades in life", sharing mortgage, childcare and social pressure. Emotional loyalty is no longer the core bond. The husband's acquiescence to his wife's cheating is actually the maintenance of this "cooperative relationship."
The social-cultural discipline of men puts many husbands in a situation of “passive silence.” In traditional Japanese concepts, men are given the role of "family pillar" to show the characteristics of "hidden restraint", and publicly speaking about marital contradictions is often seen as an expression of "incapacity".
This is confirmed by a 2025 survey by Reson Datoru, a company that runs the Healmate dating platform for married people:
Among the 279 married men surveyed, 41.2% expressed their willingness to have extramarital affairs, and 30% of them had put it into practice, but most chose to hide it from their wives.
This "two-way secrecy" forms a delicate balance-husbands' own infidelity to marriage makes them lack the moral position to blame their wives; However, the society's demand for men's "family image" makes them reluctant to disclose their marriage rift.
A middle manager of a company in Tokyo revealed in an anonymous interview,"Everyone is maintaining a superficial peace, and breaking the window is not good for anyone."
The changing role of women in society is also reshaping the balance of power in marriage. As the education level and employment rate of Japanese women improve, the traditional division of labor model of "male men outside and female women inside" has gradually disintegrated. According to a report in 2022 by the Japanese newspaper, more and more women are getting rid of the constraints of their “homewife” status, seeking value in their careers and personal freedom, and significantly reducing their dependence on marriage.
This change has led men to realize that finding the right partner after a divorce is extremely expensive — a 2020 survey by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 40.6% of men aged 16 to 24 have never had any sexual experience, and the “herbivore men” group’s indifference to relationships further aggravates the imbalance in the marriage market.
Some husbands acquiesce in their wives' infidelity, which is essentially a passive adaptation to the improvement of women's independence consciousness, fearing that tough intervention will directly lead to the breakdown of marriage.
At the same time, Japanese men's own betrayal rates are also at a higher level. According to the same survey report by the Japan Family Planning Association, Japan's married men's betrayal rates reach 61.8%, and many men have had out-of-marriage or ambiguous relationships after marriage.
This widespread double standard makes the husband often feel guilty for his own behavior when he discovers that his wife is betrayed, thereby reducing the willingness to pursue his wife’s responsibilities.
In addition, men who have long relied on their wives to manage their family life face enormous difficulties after a divorce — most of them do not cook, wash, clean up household duties, and are not familiar with their children’s habits and education. Adjusting to single life can be extremely costly. These practical factors combined together, allowing husbands to finally acquiesce in the face of their wives cheating.
The phenomenon of Japanese women's high rate of exorcism and the implicit consent of their husbands is the result of the interplay of many factors in the course of Japanese social development. It reflects both the contradiction between traditional family models and the rhythm of modern social life, but also reflects the conflict of individual emotional needs and reality pressure in marriage relationships.
The deep-seated reason behind this phenomenon is not only the internal problems of the family, but also the complicated present situation of Japanese social structure and cultural concepts, which deserves further attention and discussion.
The source:
Japan Family Planning Association 2024 Modern Japan Marriage Survey Report
The official link:
https://www.jfpa.go.jp/research/report/marriage/2024/
Statistics Bureau of Japan, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2023 "Household Economic Survey Report"
The official link:
https://www.stat.go.jp/data/kakei/2023/index.htmlJapan Institute for Labor Policy and Training Workers' Situation Survey 2023
The official link:
https://www.jil.go.jp/research/report/working_conditions/2023/