One Dream Man versus Twenty-Five Women with Dreams: Gender and Ambition in the Bachelor Japan

ABSTRACT With a flashy montage, viewers of television show The Bachelor Japan (2017–present) are introduced to Japan’s inaugural bachelor, 35-year-old Kubo Hirotake. Kubo is described as everything women in Japan are said to want – he is tall, handsome, sporty, highly educated, and most importantly, rich. In the program Kubo is presented with a pool of 25 potential marriage partners and charged with finding the woman of his dreams in what producers describe as the ultimate modern fairy tale, a ‘heated battle’ for the heart of the perfect man. Appearing at a time in Japan when marriage rates are at an all-time low and young people increasingly deem romantic love unimportant to their lives, the program may on initial viewing be a treatise on the importance of marriage. On closer inspection however, the politics of The Bachelor Japan reveal the dreams of contemporary Japanese women and the pressures they face surviving a society hostile to their independence. In this article I argue that The Bachelor Japan, far from following the traditional fairy tale narrative in which a woman is rescued by a handsome prince, instead shows women on a completely new path – one on which they may become princesses on their own terms.