Post-COVID, a new trend is on the rise for eligible bachelors in regional Japan: quitting their jobs to be with their partners.
In decades past, it was assumed that working women who entered relationships would compromise to facilitate their partner’s career. That often meant quitting entirely to be a housewife, a practice known in Japanese as 寿退社 (kotobuki taisha). Or, it meant giving up promotion paths by changing jobs to follow their husbands.
But in 2026, that dynamic is shifting. Japanese media reports that more young men are quitting and transferring jobs to live where their prospective wives already work. The trend is especially marked among men living in rural areas.
A changing economy and long-range love
Much like the rest of the world, the single-income Japanese household has long since become a right-wing mythology espoused by wealthy, out-of-touch patriarchs rather than a broadly practical family plan.
According to an analysis of the Statistics Bureau of Japan’s 2024 employment survey, slightly more than 70% of households have both parents working, a number that has been rising steadily since the 1980s. Shifting social values and stagnating wages make dual incomes a necessity to keep up with rising childcare costs.
At the same time, another workplace mythos is disappearing: the lifelong salaryman career. New hires no longer stick with that first company. The majority of male workers (across full-time employees and contract workers) have transferred jobs at least once in their careers. All of this is to say, the economic backdrop for the latest trend in young men’s love lives is a work life where their partner will more than likely keep working.
On the romance side, digital communication technologies are changing how people form relationships, especially with regard to location. Nearly half of young men and women go through a long-distance relationship, with surveys showing that “distance makes no difference to feelings” being the most crucial reason for their decision. Thanks to digital video chat technology that exploded in usage during COVID, that belief is more true than ever before.
Not only can relationships sustain long-distance, they can start long-distance as well. Dating apps were already popular pre-2020, but took off in a big way during lockdowns.
As of 2025, 41% of relationships began on dating apps, by far the most common method for finding a partner. In the digital era, young people are meeting and dating online. This means that moving – and therefore changing jobs – is baked into the way that modern romance works.
Country boys and city girls
These new work and dating dynamics intersect with the demographic trends in rural and urban communities.
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Rural areas have already been experiencing an exodus of young women seeking more autonomy and opportunity in the cities. Staying in the countryside, even if the job opportunities were there, they would still be subject to traditionalist culture that expects women to handle housework while men bring in the income. Even if they could find a career, it would most likely be limited to gender-coded labor like nursing or early-childhood education.
So it is that young women have been leaving the countryside for decades now, looking to the cities for more progressive mindsets that would allow them to build careers on their own terms. In response, in 2024, Japan’s government floated the idea of paying women to move from Tokyo to rural locations across Japan. It abandoned the proposal after critics called it sexist.
Now in 2026, young men are following women’s lead. Dating apps link men in the countryside up with the women who already left. Some ultimately decide to transfer into the city to be with their girlfriends.
According to one job-transfer service company, the change has been dramatic. They say their male user base has risen to 40% of their total clientele, with men in rural areas comprising a vast majority of that growth.
The logic is straightforward. One person has to transfer, and transferring to the city where there is more economic opportunity is more viable than transferring to the countryside. Transferring jobs is also easier for men than for women, who are still burdened by expectations that leaving a job means they are prioritizing family life.
This role reversal from eras past reflects the shifting values of both the men and women involved. The women want more autonomy and opportunity to invest in their careers, and the young men are less invested in careerism and patriarchal household structure than in the past. The more balanced relationship dynamics are then reflected in the more balanced gender ratio in the job-transfer services that facilitate compromise between love and work.
Progress and problems
All told, these new dynamics reflect a social shift towards more progressive values: more autonomy in the workplace, more balance between genders, more stable careers for women, less career pressure for men. But the economic background of rural decline, stagnant wages, and rising childcare costs leaves plenty of room for concern.
Even if the culture of rural areas is changing, they’re still not keeping up with the economic opportunities of a large city. And while economic autonomy is a sign of progress, the fact that a single-income household is broadly unviable means that the careers people pursue aren’t necessarily by choice.
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Still, even if the underlying economic forces are problematic, signs point to people’s attitudes leading the way. Young men and women across Japan are making it work and finding ways to compromise while building a future together.
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