The EconomistOctober 5th 2019 Asia 33
1I
von widiahtuti’sjob is, on the face of it,
straightforward. As an auditor at the
Food, Drug and Cosmetics Assessment
Agency (lppom), an organisation in the
leafy city of Bogor, Ms Widiahtuti reviews
the applications of companies hoping their
products will be deemed halal, meaning
that their consumption or use does not
break any of the strictures of Islam. Lately,
however, her job has acquired an absurd
streak. Halal is a concept most commonly
applied to diet, and Ms Widiahtuti spends
most of her time considering applications
from food and beverage companies which
want to assure Muslim consumers that
their products are free of pork and alcohol,
which devout Muslims eschew. But some
applications concern products that aren’t
edible. As she lists the musical instru-
ments and sex toys that she and her team
have inspected recently, she giggles at the
absurdity of asking: is this vibrator halal?
Ms Widiahtuti does not believe that
ceos are becoming more pious. But ordin-
ary Indonesians are. The country is home
to more Muslims—some 230m—than any-
where else in the world. They, in turn, con-
sume more products that have been certi-
fied halal than Muslims anywhere else.
Companies spy opportunity. The number
of products that received halal certifica-
tions quadrupled between 2012 and 2017. A
small but growing share of such companiesBOGOR
Or at least in Indonesia, it might soon
have to beIndonesia’s pious consumersThis magazine is
certified halal
Is this the way good Muslims roll?E
venafteryearsofattendingmatch-
making parties, a professional in
Tokyo explains, she has not found any
suitable marriage prospects. “I’m tired of
going to these events and not meeting
anyone,” she gripes. So she has decided
to expand her pool of prospective part-
ners by looking for love outside the
capital. To that end she has filled out an
online profile detailing her name, job,
hobbies and even weight on a match-
making site that pairs up single urba-
nites with people from rural areas.
Match-making services that promote
iju konkatsu, meaning “migration
spouse-hunting”, are increasingly com-
mon in Japan. They are typically operat-
ed by an unlikely marriage-broker: local
governments. In Akita, a prefecture near
the northern tip of Japan’s main island,
the local government has long managed
an online match-making service to link
up local lonely-hearts. It claims to have
successfully coupled up more than 1,350
Akita residents since it launched nine
years ago. It recently began offering a
similar service to introduce residents to
people living outside the prefecture and
is optimistic about its prospects. “By
using the konkatsu site, we hope that
more people from outside will marry
someone from Akita to come and live
here,” says Rumiko Saito of the Akita
Marriage Support Centre.
Along with online matching services,
municipalities across Japan host parties
to help singles mingle. They also organ-
ise subsidised group tours in rural pre-
fectures, in which half the participants
are locals and the other half from cities,toencourageurbanitestomarryand
move to the countryside. Hundreds of
singletons participate in these tours
every year.
The rural bureaucrats are playing
cupid in the hopes of stemming emigra-
tion. The population is shrinking in 40 of
Japan’s 47 prefectures. Young people
move from the countryside to cities to go
to university or look for a job. As a result,
the dating pool in rural areas is becoming
ever tinier—a situation that encourages
even more young people to move away.
The same singletons keep showing up at
all the local konkatsu events; there is
little prospect of meeting new people.
“The size of the rural konkatsu market is
small; it’s nearly non-existent,” says Koki
Goto of the Japan Konkatsu Support
Association.
The difficulty of finding true love in
the countryside is compounded by a
gender mismatch. In 80% of prefectures
with declining populations, young wom-
en are more likely than men to relocate to
cities. This means that whereas there are
more single women than men in big
cities like Tokyo, bachelors outnumber
spinsters in rural areas. Many men in the
countryside are “left behind”, laments a
government official in Akita.
So much for the theory. Most iju kon-
katsuschemes are quite new, making it
hard to assess whether they work in
practice. Only a handful of urban-rural
couples have tied the knot using Akita’s
match-making system. The professional
in Tokyo has not yet met the one either.
But she is willing to try anything that
might improve her chances of doing so.Bridesforbumpkins
Depopulation in JapanAKITA
Rural areas are trying to seduce nubile young urbanites—quite literally