Married with two children, 46-year-old Kumiko Mashima thinks her life is just about perfect. She met her loving husband through an omiai -- a formal introduction arranged by a go-between with a view to marriage -- and they both adore their daughters. But before she found her way into her husband's arms, she went through more than 30 omiai, meeting man after man in search of a soul mate.

Mashima was only 22 when she had her first omiai. She was still a university student and had no intention of being tied down. Unfortunately, though, her parents didn't see it that way, and fretted over the possibility that their daughter would remain unmarried.

"My family took me to a fortuneteller," says Mashima. "And she told me that because I was headstrong, I would marry very late in life. Hearing this, my parents started rushing to get me married off."

The first man she met at an omiai was a government official which, it goes without saying, meant he enjoyed considerable status. Mashima, who dragged her heels about going to that omiai in the first place, didn't care in the slightest. Her parents, on the other hand, were ecstatic when the man showed an interest in their daughter. From that day on, Mashima's mother went into a frenzy, forcing her to take lessons in tea ceremony and flower arrangement.

"I decided to stop seeing him," says Mashima. "I couldn't take the pressure from the people around me, including my parents. Ironically, though, I look back now and think he was definitely the second-best of them all -- after my husband, of course."

It was nearly 10 years later that she met her husband. During those years, she met dozens of men, most of whom turned out to be complete disasters. One of them, for example, had to have his mother's approval before asking to see Mashima again; another barely uttered a word and had no interests at all; yet another was so indecisive that he couldn't even choose a restaurant.

By the time she met her husband, Mashima had a pretty good eye for men. In fact, she has even written about her experiences in "Omiai no Tatsujin (Being an Expert at Omiai)," which was published in 1994.

"I knew from the moment I met him that we would click," says Mashima. "He was a person with a sense of independence, something that all the others had lacked. And I just had a feeling that he would take good care of me."

Omiai, as opposed to so-called love marriages, typically have a very short courting period. According to the latest data (for 1997) from the National Institution of Population and Social Security, couples who met at school go out together for an average of 7.4 years before getting married, whereas omiai-matched couples only spend a year on that phase of their relationship.

"The biggest difference between love marriages and omiai-kekkon [marriages resulting from omiai] is that we fall in love after our marriage instead of before," says Mashima.

So, six months after their omiai introduction, Mashima and her husband were married. And we all know what comes next . . .

"People seem to think that because I married through an omiai, I automatically had to have sex with him when I didn't want to," says Mashima. "But in truth, I think 90 percent of women decide whether or not they want to pursue the relationship based on physical attraction."

Even though Mashima had to go through so many omiai, she was lucky to be allowed a choice of accepting or rejecting a proposal. Omiai in the old days were final -- once you were introduced, you had little choice but to marry that man.

"The omiai system was formalized in the Edo Period," says Noritake Kanzaki, a folklorist and head of the Institute for the Culture of Travel in Tokyo's Akihabara district. "At that time, people got married to ensure the continuance of their family line."

In the feudal Edo Period (1603-1867) of military dictatorship, farmers were effectively serfs forced to live according to the shogunate's strict laws and the rules imposed by the samurai warrior class. Like serfs in medieval Russia or Europe, too, Japan's farmers were restricted to living in small villages where their overlords could keep a close eye on them.

As a result of this, according to Kanzaki, people in a village would spend all day together and keep a watch on everyone else's movements. The close-knit familiarity of village life encouraged fraternal rather than romantic feelings between men and women, while the constant surveillance would make it difficult for lovers to conduct relationships. Under these circumstances, because they couldn't find a partner themselves, people of marriageable age had to have someone act as a go-between to introduce them.

That person is the nakodo, the official matchmaker. Hence omiai was born.

"The nakodo couldn't be just anybody," says Kanzaki. "That person must have a high social position in the community, so they can consider not just the affinity of the man and woman, but also the social standing of the two families."

Meanwhile, for different reasons, samurai needed omiai as well. Living as they did according to the code of bushi, honor was a key part of their life and more than anything they could not risk a marital mismatch that might bring with it any kind of social taint or embarrassment.

"Because it was a male-dominated society, samurai had hardly any contact with women," says Kanzaki. "So, they needed a nakodo to introduce them to women suited to their social position."

Now, nearly 150 years later, omiai and nakodo still exist -- with the nakodo usually being a relative, close family friend or your section head at work -- but the number of people marrying through omiai is decreasing. According to data from the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, in 1982 out of about 9,000 couples sampled in which the wife was under the age of 50, 29.4 percent met through omiai, whereas by 1997 that figure was down to 9.6 percent.

"That is because of urbanization," says Kanzaki. "People don't know their neighbors any more, and that anonymity makes it easier for them to fall in love."

Conversely, however, for those who still live in agricultural villages, this mass flight of people to towns and cities has become a grave problem, as there are few marriageable women left in the countryside, and ever fewer nakodo to help in their quest for a life partner.

In response to concern about the implications of this rural crisis, many municipal governments around Japan have started hosting omiai parties for single men and women in the last few years. These bids to stem the declining birth rate have clearly struck a wider chord, as the Health Ministry recently announced a proposal to help fund such prefectural initiatives.

However, Yoko Itamoto, head of the PISA (Partners Introducing Service Agency) section of Nippon Seinenkan (Japan Youth Association), is not exactly swept off her feet by such moves.

"It's not that I am against it," she says. "I am all for giving these [single] people the chance to meet. It's just that with the government supporting this project financially, they are going to be looking for results. Then I'm afraid that they won't think the number of marriages justifies the amount of money they pay."

The government-approved Nippon Seinenkan established PISA in 1980 with the aim of giving young people more opportunities to meet. Aside from regular omiai parties, it also holds events such as parties to introduce men from agricultural villages to city women, or tours that enable city women to experience farm life.

"From our longtime experience, I know that the marriage rate from these parties is low," says Itamoto. "But as the government is going to use people's taxes on these projects, what kind of results are they going to expect? Then, if they are not satisfied, what are they going to do? They haven't explained anything yet."

Itamoto explains that her biggest concern is that behind the government's encouragement for singles to get married, there may lie the stereotyped expectation that once women marry, they should concentrate on household chores and child-rearing.

"These problems [to do with the shortage of wives in agricultural areas] should be taken into consideration along with creating a new environment that enables women to work freely while being married," says Itamoto. "Otherwise, I am afraid that we are going to be repeating history and going back to the fixed idea that women are happy as long as they get married and become mothers."

Indeed, marriage as a whole seems to be going through a rocky patch nationwide, among both young men and young women -- married or not. According to a 1999 Cabinet Office survey of 1,281 people, 36.3 percent felt that marriage was a burden, either financially, physically or emotionally. In addition, nearly 40 percent of the women felt household chores were a burden, while 49 percent of the men complained of the financial strain that marriage imposed.

Interestingly, in terms of agreeing with the survey's six categories of reasons why marriage might be a burden -- household chores; child-rearing; nursing the spouse's parents; financial costs; difficulty in balancing time spent at work and at home; and the limitation on moving freely -- aside from regarding the "financial costs" category, the number of women answering affirmatively invariably exceeded men in every other category.

Hence it is perhaps not so surprising that many women chose to remain single. In fact, the latest data from the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications indicates that in 2000, 54 percent of women aged 25 to 29 were single, compared with only 24 percent in 1980. Equally, the nation's pool of bachelors in that age group appears to be deepening by the day, with the ministry's data showing that whereas only 55.1 percent were single in 1980, by 2000 that had risen to 69.3 percent.

"People are not attracted to married life any more," says Masahiro Yamada, assistant professor of sociology at Tokyo Gakugei University. "Sex used to be one of the main marriage lures, but now that people can have sex before marriage, there is no longer that inconvenience in single life."

Yamada is the creator of the term "parasite single," which is now commonly applied to young (and not-so-young) people who choose to remain unmarried and live with their parents. Such people typically have minimal living expenses and live in the comfortable style to which they have become accustomed, being free to spend whatever money they make as they wish -- whether on traveling abroad, buying gifts for their boyfriend or girlfriend, or purchasing cars or expensive brand items.

But it's not only about money, because parasite singles have lots of time as well. The mundane business of cooking and cleaning is taken care of by their parents.

With so much time and money to themselves, these parasite singles can undoubtedly live the high life. So it's no wonder they choose to stay single -- or do they?

"Actually, most of these parasite singles didn't choose to be unmarried," says Yamada. "They would get married if they could. But equally they're not prepared to sacrifice their high standard of living for anything less than a 'perfect' partner."

Yamada has been studying the phenomenon of young people staying unmarried since the early 1990s, when the nation's steeply falling birth rate began to be recognized as a serious issue. In his 1999 book "Parasaito Singuru no Jidai (The Era of the Parasite Single)," he examines the unrealistic dreams that many of these singles hang on to. Such women, he says, typically wish for a husband who has a better position than they do at work, and who is willing to do half of the household chores -- whereas men dream of a woman who doesn't complain at all about his salary and willingly does all the household chores.

"There is a pattern to these parasite singles," says Yamada. "The women are often the daughters of very successful fathers who are highly educated and have good salaries. On the other hand, the men generally earn low salaries and have poor educational backgrounds."

However, although most of these parasite singles may not be in the least bit concerned about their single status, their parents almost always are. So what do they do? They make their children go to omiai.

But omiai just aren't what they were. Gone for the most part is the traditional idea of them being formal arranged meetings with a view to marriage, after which the woman would only very rarely decline a man's proposal. Instead, omiai have come to be simply a means of meeting members of the opposite sex, with the singles feeling free to turn down one potential suitor after another until they find someone who they think matches their dreams.

"Omiai have become just a consumer service," says Yamada. "But even in this form, omiai will never disappear because no matter how much the marriage rate from them declines, there will always be a demand for them among eligible singles."