¡°Why don¡¯t they get married?¡± anguished parents wonder of their aging unmarried children.

The various explanations boil down to two: ¡°I don¡¯t want to¡± and ¡°I can¡¯t¡± ¡ª can¡¯t for economic, social or psychological reasons; don¡¯t want to because, for example: ¡°For meals there¡¯s the convenience store, for laundry there¡¯s the dry cleaner¡¯s. And I¡¯ve discovered I don¡¯t have an overwhelming need for sex.¡± Or, from a woman¡¯s point of view, ¡°If I were to come home late from work some evening and my husband asked me, ¡®Where¡¯s my dinner?¡¯ I¡¯d kill him.¡±

Those snippets come from Spa magazine ¡ª not the current issue but that of Nov. 11, 1998. So if the Japanese family is in crisis, as a glance through the table of contents of Ushio magazine¡¯s ¡°overview of the family¡± this month suggests it is, it¡¯s not a cataclysmic crisis but a slowly unfolding one ¡ª maybe, therefore, reversible, if there¡¯s any point to reversing it.