Japanese Mail Order Brides – Rare Jewels

The Internet woods are thick with mail order brides from Russia, China, and the Philippines as well as dozens of third world countries. Nevertheless many men prefer Japanese women they are thought to make the best wives in the world. But now that Japan is a developed nation, however, are mail order brides still available from Japan?

Well, yes – but not nearly in as great a number as before. Ironically, the entire mail order bride phenomenon started out decades ago with Japanese-American men would write to their families back home asking help in finding a Japanese bride (in fact, arranged marriages are not at all uncommon in Japan even today). The man’s parents would find a candidate and the two would marry despite barely knowing each other – they might even meet for the first time at the wedding. The practice of arranged marriages – marrying a bride you barely know, chosen by your parents – was the rule rather than the exception in Japan until recently. Since at that time the US was far richer than Japan, Japanese-Americans could easily find a bride from the Old Country – to marry for economic reasons only was thought quite normal. Due to the Western romantic tradition, this practice struck most Americans as rather strange, and the term “mail order bride” came into being.

These days quite a few American men are looking for a “mail order bride” from another country. There are a number of reasons for this. Although Japan is now a developed country, there are still quite a few of Japanese women promoting themselves as mail order brides on the Internet. One advantage of Japan being a developed country is that Japanese women are far less likely than women from third world nations to marry only for economic reasons – that’s right, you’re may have to win her heart before she will marry you! But hey, that should be a good sign.

The Western stereotype of Japanese women as submissive handmaidens is not necessarily true anymore, and that applies double to mail order brides. Because of the relatively low status of women in Japanese society, a lot of Japanese women seek to marry Western men because they believe them to be less authoritarian than Japanese men. Yeah, it’s also true that “traditional” Japanese women are more submissive. But traditional women rarely marry foreign men – after all, marrying a foreigner (and living overseas) is not a particularly traditional thing to do. Nevertheless, after living in Japan for several years, I speak from experience when I say that Japanese women are by and large quite caring and considerate (and some of them are LOTS of fun!). If you are looking for a foreign bride, in my opinion Japanese women are your best bet.

The Mail Order Brides blog offers comprehensive information about Russian, Asian, and Latin American mail order brides.

China backpedals on filtering software order

China’s authoritarian government has backed away from an order to load Internet-filtering software on every new computer after a major outcry by citizens used to the relative freedom of online life.

Legal challenges, petitions and satirical cartoons had been part of a broad grass-roots effort to scuttle the initiative since it was announced earlier this month.

A Ministry of Industry and Information Technology official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Chinese computer users are not required to use or install the Green Dam Youth Escort software – though the software will still come pre-installed or be included on a compact disc with all PCs sold on the mainland from July 1.

“The use of this software is not compulsory,” said the official, who would not give his name as is customary with Chinese officials.

Executives from the company that created the software had said earlier that it was possible to uninstall Green Dam but it was not clear until Tuesday that the government’s new regulation would not penalize people who chose not to use it.

The change marked a small victory for a burgeoning anti-censorship movement in China. Internet users in particular have expressed growing frustration with official efforts to monitor and restrict online content. China’s Internet has emboldened public opinion and given citizens the tools they need to mobilize around a cause, such as exposing corruption or halting a project believed threatening to public health.

Although the government says the software is aimed at blocking violence and pornography, users who have tried it say it also prohibits visiting sites with discussions of homosexuality, mentions of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group and even images of pigs because the software confuses them with naked human bodies, according to Hong Kong media reports.

Many Chinese Internet users have mercilessly mocked the software, which is already available as a free download.

Creative critics have posted at least a dozen variations of the “Green Dam Girl,” imagined as a busty Japanese manga-style cartoon character in an army cap and a mini dress who totes a bucket of soy sauce – considered a disinfectant – for cleaning up dirty Web sites. One such online image has the caption “Big Brother is Watching You” scrawled in the background.

Petitions and at least one legal challenge have also been launched. Beijing lawyer Li Fangping submitted a request to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last week demanding a public hearing on the “legitimacy and rationality” of forcing computer makers to include the software with every unit sold. Li said Tuesday he had yet to receive a response from the ministry.

Yang Hengjun, 45, a well-known blogger and novelist based in the southern city of Guangzhou said Chinese parents today are more inclined to demand a free and open Internet over a free but flawed pornography filter.

“On the Internet, we can do many things and we can criticize the government. This was not possible before,” he said. “Having used the Internet like this, we are now unable to tolerate having it restricted.”

Yang cited the central role of the Internet in exposing and criticizing several recent scandals of particular concern to parents, such as the contamination of infant formula with the industrial chemical melamine and research that showed schools collapsed more easily than other buildings during last year’s massive Sichuan earthquake.

“In the last two years, all of the miserable stuff that happened regarding children was all revealed through the Internet, even though some government officials, particularly the local ones, didn’t want it to get out,” Yang said.

Online forums also helped rally support for Deng Yujiao, a 21-year-old karaoke bar waitress who stabbed a local official to death after he demanded sex from her.

A court ruled Tuesday that Deng acted in self-defense and would face no punishment for the killing. The outpouring of support for the woman on the Internet in recent weeks prompted the local government to take the extraordinary step of pledging that she would receive a fair trial.

China has the world’s most extensive system of Web monitoring and censorship and has issued numerous regulations in response to the rise of blogging and other trends. But it remains far more open than the country’s tightly controlled print and television media.

Controlling online content has also become increasingly difficult with the explosion of China’s Internet population, now the world’s largest with 298 million users. Chinese blog authors total 162 million.

Green Dam is the government’s most intrusive tool yet because it extends censorship to the user’s personal hard drive and can even force non-Internet software like text editors to crash if a blacklisted phrase like Falun Gong is typed.

PC makers will determine if the software is pre-installed on the hard drive or enclosed on a CD and will be required to tell authorities how many computers they have shipped with the software.

Critics have argued that rolling out software in such a pervasive fashion will lead people to greater self-censorship among Chinese net users because they are bound to fear that the program might still be working secretly in the background even after it has been removed.

Tests of Green Dam by independent researchers have also found that the software makes computers more vulnerable to security threats.

Computer scientists at the University of Michigan said in a report last week that the program contained “serious security vulnerabilities due to programming errors,” and recommended users protect themselves by uninstalling Green Dam immediately.

The Michigan report also said that a look at Green Dam’s coding seemed to show some of it had been lifted from an American-made filtering program CyberSitter, raising questions about intellectual-property violations related to the software. The maker of that program, Solid Oak Software of Santa Barbara, Calif., plans to seek a court injunction, but acknowledged that it’s new legal terrain for the company.

Wen Yunchao, a former journalist who blogs under the name Bei Feng, said many now hope the government will go a step further and scrap its 40 million yuan ($5.8 million) order for the software.

“When the government uses taxpayers’ money, they should think clearly whether it’s necessary or not,” Wen said. “If you bought something that people don’t use, then what’s the point of spending all that money?”

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