Getting Out — page 3

The hoju controversy is just one example of how marital friction is roiling the region's male-dominated societies. Traditionally, many Asian men have done as they pleased with almost absolute impunity—be that taking a mistress, blowing the family savings on a gambling binge, or walking out the door, never to return. Now Asian women are doing the walking, too. "The gap between how women and men view marriage has grown ever wider," says center president Kwak. And the difference isn't only in Korea. In India, the word divorcé used to be "associated with a Jezebel image," says sociologist Imtiaz Ahmad. But "in today's India, women just don't take as much nonsense as they used to," says Madras-based marriage counselor Vijay Nagaswami. Nisha (not her real name) is an Indian woman who at age 22 left her home in Britain for an arranged marriage in India. It was, she says, a miserable union, which culminated after 18 years in her attempting to kill herself. She finally left her husband in September 2002 with her two sons, and is now filing for divorce. "For years I chose not to leave, believing that loving a man was enough to change him," she says. And now? "I've wised up."

That wisdom has been spreading throughout Asia as women demand more equality in home life. Even in the staunchly Catholic Philippines, where divorce is not allowed, the grounds for annulment of a marriage have been widened (especially to include cases where one partner has a low IQ), and legislation has been enacted to speed up the annulment process. "The culture is changing in that many women no longer wait for men to make them happy," says Irma Hutabarat, chairwoman of the Legal Aid Consultancy for Women and Family in Indonesia. More than half of all divorce proceedings in the country are initiated by women, and marriage breakdowns are occurring at rates never before seen (the number of divorces in Jakarta increased 15% from 2001 to 2002). And in Malaysia—where last year a Muslim man attempted to divorce his wife by mobile-phone text message (a divorce was at first upheld but subsequently overruled by the courts, under intense pressure from women's groups)—many women are also beginning to call it a day. "Women are more independent financially than before," says Kuala Lumpur-based Shari'a lawyer Kamar Ainiah. "When divorce happens, they are capable of bringing up their kids sometimes even without the support of their ex-husbands."

It was not economics but the knowledge that something vital had gone from her marriage to a childhood sweetheart that drove Indonesian TV personality and actress Alya Rohali to take action. After a year of joint therapy with her husband, they agreed to end their five years of marriage, and today the 28-year-old has joined the ranks of many high-profile women in Indonesia who are divorcés or single moms and wear the badge proudly. This is a significant cultural shift in a country where the same word means both "divorcé" and "widow." But according to Rohali, "We have proved that we can succeed financially, with or without a man."

Indeed, the willingness of many Asian women to view their own needs as secondary to those of their husbands is decreasing. "Divorces are on the increase because the younger generation has been brought up differently," says Uthaiwan Jamsutee, a public prosecutor in Thailand. "They are more individualistic. When they get married, if there is a problem, they tend to think more of their own interests instead of family harmony."

But the divorce boom is not merely a reflection of generational shifts. After all, in many parts of Asia it isn't just sobbing twentysomethings but much older couples who are breaking up. The children have grown up, the husband has retired or retrenched, and the wife weighs up her options—which are increasingly likely to include claiming half of her husband's retirement package to start a new, single life. There may be no overt conflict between the spouses, but that isn't the issue—fulfillment and the search for meaning are. Senior divorce has taken root with especial tenacity in Japan, where, like China, 70% of all divorces are initiated by women, and where a large senior population has plenty of leisure time and the wherewithal to ponder how they will spend their remaining years. In 1975, 6,810 Japanese couples divorced after 20 years or more of marriage. In 2002, the total was 45,536. "I think that one has to be happy in one's life," says Atsuko Okano, a Tokyo-based marriage consultant and author of A Perfect Divorce Manual. "If it takes a divorce to attain it, then I'm all for it."

	It isn't only sobbing twentysomethings breaking up; senior couples are doing it, too

It is the men who are having a hard time dealing with this new reality. In Japan, discarded husbands seem to be approaching single life with visible bewilderment. The figure of the abandoned salaryman, struggling to cook for himself or do the laundry for the first time, is becoming an increasingly common one in Japanese suburbs. These are men who doggedly commuted to city jobs for the greater part of their lives, in the service of their country's once spectacular economic growth. But in their declining years, they are faced with a double restructuring—one from a corporation that no longer values their contributions, the other from a wife who has grasped that there is more to life than keeping house and is now agitating for her freedom. There's even a term for the kind of divorce the wife is seeking: risutora rikon (restructuring divorce), meaning divorce as the first step in the positive reorganization of one's life.

That phrase was coined by Hiromi Ikeuchi, author of numerous relationship manuals and president of Tokyo Kazoku Labo—an organization providing counseling, workshops and legal guidance to would-be divorcés. "Men don't cope with divorce that well," she says. "In Japan, women almost always get custody of the children, so a man loses his status as a husband and father too. And he is hurt." It seems these men are more than hurt. They are, apparently, on the run. "Japanese women are strong now," says Ikeuchi, whose own divorce at the age of 32 led to ostracism from her family. "Divorced men tend to fear them."

Still, new role models are lighting the way for the disoriented. Kazutomo Miyamoto, a former star pitcher for the Yomiuri Giants, became a single father in 1996, when his marriage ended and his wife ceded him custody of their daughter, Sayano, then seven years old. Instead of panicking over the prospect of solo parenting, he wrote a best-selling book about his experiences, meanwhile pursuing his new career as a sports announcer. In his ball-playing days, Miyamoto would spend six months of the year on the road. Now, at 40, he still travels a lot (his parents take care of Sayano in his absence). But in the vital times when he's home, he says he meets far more of his daughter's emotional needs than he did when he was married. In particular, Miyamato says, he has finally come to understand "the importance of talking and listening to one's child." Looking back on his breakup, he adds, "I don't think it was a tragedy for me to part from my wife. On the contrary, I think I learned a lot from the experience."

I don't want to beat up on my own gender, but there is some karma in all of this. Numberless Asian men have loved and respected their spouses. But that doesn't alter the fact that historically, as a sex, we have insisted that our women have bound feet and not talk back, that they remain virgins before marriage, live in purdah, and content themselves with earning less than men—if, that is, we permitted them to have jobs at all. We have demanded dowries as a form of compensation for marrying women, we have trafficked in them, and we have asked them to find a lifetime's fulfillment in preparing meals, cleaning up after us and ferrying the kids to school. We have created cultures where women are executed for committing "fornication." We have bullied and ranted and had our way. Across much of Asia, those days are now over.

According to counselor Ikeuchi, divorced men live on average nine years less than their married peers. These words ring in my head as I leave her office and step out into a crisp, Tokyo afternoon. It's just as well that I plan to marry again. If three really is the new two, then there's life in me yet.

With reporting by Juliane Han and Kim Yooseung/Seoul, Robert Horn/Bangkok, Joyce Huang/Taipei, Jake Lloyd-Smith/Singapore, Sara Rajan/Bombay, Mageswary Ramakrishnan/Kuala Lumpur, Nelly Sindayen/Manila, Jason Tedjasukmana/Jakarta and Michiko Toyama/Tokyo

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