little comments

The title of this piece seems to beg the question a better catch for who? As many have pointed out the numbers on non-Japanese women marrying Japanese men is far, far higher than the other way round. However you choose to interpret that statistic the reality is that for large numbers of foreign women a Japanese man is a good catch.

Anyway, as we seem to be dealing in stereotypes it seems to me that an awful lot of the men married to Japanese wives are chauvinistic, childish and generally unpleasant. Seems like most can't handle educated, liberated Western women so they escape to Japan. I can't help thinking that the foreign men who buy into the stereotypes of Japanese women and the Japanese women that believe the stereotypes of foreign men deserve each other. And yes, the Japanese women married to foreign men are often not considered that attractive by Japanese standards, but partly that is due to taste.

According to the information below (for wikipedia), the overwhelming number of international marriages in Japan involve a Japanese husband a foreign wife. So if this article explains why Japanese women prefer foreign men, why are foreign women falling for Japanese men?

In 2003, there were 740,191 marriages in Japan, of which 28,831 involved a foreign bride, and 7,208 involved a foreign groom. Foreign-born women who married a Japanese-born man were predominantly born in China (10,242), The Philippines (7,794), Korea (5,318), Thailand (1,445) and Brazil (296). Foreign-born men who married a Japanese-born woman were predominantly born in Korea (2,235), the United States (1,529), China (890), UK (334) and Brazil (265)[115]

In 2006 there were 735,132 marriages in Japan, of which 40,154 involved a foreign bride, and 8,708 involved a foreign groom. Foreign-born women who married a Japanese-born man were predominantly born in the Philippines (12,150), China (12,131), Korea (6,041), Thailand (1,676) and Brazil (285). Foreign-born men who married a Japanese-born woman were predominantly born in Korea (2,335), the United States (1,474), China (1,084), UK (386) and the Philippines (195).