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This is a topic that really gets me - I find it so bizaare that so many young Japanese couples choose to hold a christian wedding ceremony. A ceremony that takes as its prerequisite a belief in an alien religion, about which most people who dress up in tuxedos and white dresses (here in Japan anyway) know next to nothing.

Of course, a lot of British people marry in a christian ceremony without really believing in anything particular, but at least the priest who conducts the proceedings does believe in what he is doing. And maybe that is the key point. I bumped into an Australian friend the other day in a hotel by the sea near Gamagori city. I was there for a wedding party (more alternative than christian in this case), and he was there because he had just conducted a marriage service for a Japanese couple there. As we were talking a man, probably in his late 50s, came up to us and asked, “What church are you from?”. My friend paused awkwardly for a moment, and then said ‘Roman Catholic’. This answer met with approval, though the old man continued, “In Nagoya?” This rather stumped us, as neither I nor my friend attend church at all. At this point, we had no choice but to play dumb and feign ignorance of Japanese… The man walked off slowly.

The friend in question here works for one of the many wedding companies that provide ‘priests’ for marriages in Japan. It’s a part-time job for him on the weekends, and he makes a respectable amount of money for doing it. He’s fairly experienced now, but he used to stumble his way through the Japanese script, mangling the pronunciation almost out of recognition. But none of that seems to bother the happy couples. It’s all very light and breezy, with none of the solemn weight of centuries of tradition that we usually associate with a religious ceremony.

I’m not really writing this to criticize, though I must admit I find it a little amusing; and I can respect people choosing a ceremony for aesthetic reasons - I chose to get married at a shrine and dressed up like Japanese men have done for hundreds of years on formal occasions. Of course, that was an aesthetic choice for me, and also it was because I am living in Japan and my wife is Japanese. It just felt right. I wish I could understand why a christian wedding just ‘feels right’ for young people in Japan. Is it some kind of fashion statement? A sign of modernity? The outward expression of a lifestyle choice?

I think it’s a bit of a shame that young people here don’t see christian weddings for the sham that they are. That’s not a priest, it’s an English teacher boosting his income with a bit of part-time romaji ceremonizing… it could even be me! I don’t want to be one of those types who gets up in arms about Japanese abandoning their traditional culture - such people can be very boring. It’s actually a remarkable example of Japanese flexibility and ability to integrate ‘foreign’ ideas; though a true believer in christianity would probably be a little shocked at the light-hearted adoption of a christian ceremony, and I personally can’t help feeling that it does show a lack of pride in Japanese home-grown traditions. I suppose it’s typical of a less flexibly-minded Englishman to think it strange that Japanese people want to marry in a mock-up of a christian ceremony…