Beginnings

This introductory chapter provides a background of transnational marriage agencies, which emerged within a very specific historical and geographical context. Transnational marriage agencies specializing in introducing Chinese women to Japanese men first appeared as a significant phenomenon in Japan in the 1990s. Some marriage brokers were professionals for whom the brokerage business was a full-time job. Others were amateurs, often themselves part of a Japanese–Chinese couple. Many of these marriage agencies had an online presence. Indeed, numerous male clientele had found their way to a marriage agency via the Internet. This book offers an ethnographic study of the making of cross-border marriage. Understanding contemporary practices of crossing borders between Japan and northeast China for the sake of marriage entails exploring and theorizing the following: (1) marriage and the construction of marriageability; (2) the influence of the local; (3) the politics of similarity, proximity, and familiarity; and (4) the implicit ideologies pertaining to marriage itself.