Ageing, jaded Japanese couples choose ‘graduation’ over divorce

They met when they were scarcely more than children, and married in their early 20s. For almost five decades, Shojiro and Kimiko Shindo lived as man and wife.

They raised three daughters, worked as teachers, and lived through the ups and down of any long marriage. Last year, at the ages of 70 and 68 respectively, they ‘‘graduated’’ from it.

Kimiko went to live on a subtropical island, while Shojiro stayed home in the northernmost island of Hokkaido, 2100 km away. They are on the best of terms, and frequently visit one another.

The word for what they and an increasing number of Japanese couples have which means marriage’’.

It is, its proponents insist, a sophisticated solution to a common dilemma: that of couples who love one another and don’t want the messiness of divorce but no longer want to live together, at least not all the time.

Once the job of sending children done is sotsukon, ‘‘graduation from out into the world is done, the theory goes, marriage enters a new phase. The solution is to graduate.

The term sotsukon was coined in 2004 by author Yumiko Sugiyama in her book I Recommend Graduating From Marriage. Two years ago, a survey of 200 women aged 30 to 70 found that 57 per cent liked the idea of eventually graduating from their husbands.

Japanese couples are accustomed to spending time apart because of long working hours and because large companies often move staff around the country and overseas. After a lifetime of leaving for work early and returning late, the experience of being at home together all day can be jolting. Most often it is wives who initiate sotsukon, Sugiyama says.