Verliebt – verlobt – allein? Romantische Beziehungswelten junger Erwachsener in Zeiten der Krise

Zusammenfassung

As in all postindustrial societies, the structure of personal relationships in Japan has been subject to fundamental changes: more and more people are getting married at a later age or not at all. Though marriage and changes in marriage behaviors have been examined intensively from various perspectives in the last decades, there has been almost no research on romantic relationships beyond marriage— romantic relationships before or outside of marriage—and their meaning for individuals and their lives in contemporary Japanese society. Given the existing statistical data, it seems that young adults are increasingly considered to be tired of couple relationships and therefore prone to renounce them. Against this backdrop, the article draws on theoretical approaches from subject-related family sociology to analyze individual romantic relationship-worlds. The central questions here are: what do, or could, romantic relationship-worlds look like in the Japanese context; which role does, or could, the absence of relationships play in this context; and how are relationships and the absence thereof “done” and talked about by the interviewees. The first section is based on qualitative data collected from 2010 onwards and offers anecdotal insight into individual romantic relationships. The variance and diversity of the relationship-worlds presented in the first section are discussed in the second section—also with regard to the (possible) influences of these relationship-worlds on marriage decisions and life plans. Finally, in the third section, further research questions are raised in the form of an outlook. Here, the focus is on integrating the category of “space” into the analysis, which proves to be central for follow-up investigations.