| Yukio
Igarashi lives in Tadami, a village in the mountains of northern Japan. The
population of Tadami is around 5,000 and falling - most of the young people, especially
the young women, move out as soon as they get a chance. "When
I became 35," he says, "I started trying to get married. After 10 years
I realized that no Japanese girl would marry me, so I decided to get a bride from
Thailand." In fact, he got two Thai brides. He
paid $23,000 to marry the first one, then she refused and her family kept the
money. Then he went back and chose 20-year-old Mui
from 20 possible brides offered to him by a marriage broker. Six
years later, Mui has stopped complaining about the cold, got a Japanese driving
license, had two daughters and learned how to cook Japanese food. She
seems to be happy with her life. The number of foreign
brides, who are often widowed or divorced Filipinas, poor Chinese or Thais, started
to increase sharply in the late eighties. Ethnic Japanese
brides from Brazil and Peru are popular with men who want their children to look
Japanese. This is forcing people in small towns to
change their attitudes. "The towns change for
the better because of these foreign wives," one person said. "At
least they internationalize a little." As many
Japanese women with college degrees, better jobs and more opportunities to enjoy
themselves do not want to get married, it seems that there will be many more foreign
brides in Japan in the future. | 
