Marriage

In Japan, more than 700,000 couples get married each year, and wedding ceremonies are diverse in style.
1.The ceremony is being held at a church. It is said that more than 60 percent of all Japanese wedding ceremonies are Christian-style. And many Japanese women dream of wearing a Western-style wedding dress.
2.Shinto wedding,held at a shrine. The couple take matrimonial vows before a deity of Japan's ancient religion. In this setting, the bride is usually dressed head-to-toe in white. White is a sacred colour representing absolute purity. It symbolizes her immaculate heart, which from now on, will take on the "colour" of the family she is marrying into. There is a ritual involving sake at this type of wedding. The bride and groom sip sacred sake-three sips from each of three cups, making nine sips in all. This repetition of the lucky number three expresses gratitude to ancestors and a wish for many descendants.
Now let us take a look at the history of marriage in Japan. 1000 years ago, during the age of the Heian nobility, it was common for an aristocratic couple to live separately and for the husband to visit his wife only at night. Back then, Japanese aristocratic society was polygamous, and a man night several different wives.
In the 13th century, when the clans with the greatest military strength flourished, it became typical for a bride to move in with the groom's family. She was expected to take care of domestic matters and to guarantee the prosperity of the clan by bearing strong sons.
During the Edo period, emphasis was placed on the relationship was placed on the relationship between two families, as opposed to two individuals. This resulted in more marriages that ignored the feeling of the couple themselves. The growing desire for relationships based on personal feelings gave rise to numerous works of fiction that dealt with-and-romanticized-forbidden love. Some were presented as Bunraku and kabuki plays, and received accolades from the masses.

Huge changes came to the institution of marriage in Japan following the second world war. In 1946 the new constitution was promulgated. It proclaimed that marriage should be freely entered into by a man and a woman.
Today, most Japanese get married of their own free will, regardless of their parents' opinion.Along with the trend towards globalization, more and more Japanese are tying the knot with partners of different nationality. Slowly but surely, the institution of marriage is changing to mach the times.