This treatise is not to make any excuses for the demise of my marriage. However, my experience is quite different from the average American, so I felt it would be of some interest (and therapy on my part) to provide a short description of what happened.
Let me start off by saying that I'm a bit more traditional than many of my Japanese-American peers. My parents always tried to teach me many of the Japanese customs and traditions as I was growing up, and I have had fairly close contact with all my relatives in Japan. So it was my desire to try to keep some of that close contact with Japan by hopefully marrying a Japanese woman. With that in mind, I went through the old tradition of the "omiai" or arranged marriage. Despite what many of you might think, this is not parents arranging an anonymous marriage. The "omiai" has modernized along with the changing times.
In the omiai process, a third party (called a "nakoodo" or "baishakunin") introduces two people with the hopes that they will be interested in each other. This match-maker person is usually, but not always, known to both families (a friend or relative). The idea being that since the nakoodo knows the families and possibly both parties, this will bring together two individuals who are likely to make a match. I was introduced to this young lady and we mutually decided to start "dating". Traditionally, a decision regarding marriage is made within two to three weeks. However, given the distance between us, our courtship lasted about four months during which we exchanged letters and phone calls. She also came to the US once to visit. To make a long story short, we were married in September, 1997.
Now, the major obstacle for us was getting her to the US. As many of you know, this is not a trivial process. After careful checking, I found out that the quickest way to get her an immigrant visa (green card) was to apply to the US Embassy in Japan, rather than have her come here and apply. Despite this being the "fastest" method, we were told that it would still take about four to six months. So after we were married, I had to return to the US and she continued to live in Japan. We continued to talk by phone and by exchanging letters. About two weeks prior to her personal interview at the Embassy (the last step before getting the visa), she called to tell me that she was having second thoughts about immigrating to the US and about our marriage in general. This came as a total surprise to me, since I never got any indication from her that she had any concerns during any of our previous conversations. Furthermore, during our courtship, I constantly reminded her of the hurdles we would have to face and whether whe truely wanted to leave Japan and live in the US. Her reply was always that she wanted to do this and she had no second thoughts. Hearing her sudden concerns, I dropped everything I was doing and went to Japan to talk with her and try to work things out. Despite my efforts, she insisted that she had carefully thought things out and came to the realization that she made her decision to get married based on the fact that her parents and relatives were excited about the prospect of her getting married. She herself apparently was not totally prepared to get married. I was totally shocked to hear this, but came to the realization that forcing her to continue with the marriage wasn't going to do either one of us any good. So, we came to the mutual decision to end the marriage. We got divorced early in March, 1998, thus ending our six month marriage.
For me, this was a very painful decision. I was very aware of all the huge obstacles we faced. Marriage in-and-of-itself has all kinds of hurdles, but the fact that she would have to leave Japan and come to the US added just that many more. Being apart after our marriage was not easy and given the various hurdles we faced, I put a great deal of effort into making her transition as easy as possible. Obviously, my efforts were not enough. Hopefully, my next foray into marriage won't be the disaster it was my first time.
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