Slightly more than 1 in 4 marriages in the nation involved a divorced person in 2015, the highest since 1952, the earliest year for which comparable data are available, according to the latest data compiled by the welfare ministry.
Meanwhile international marriage has been on a declining trend since 2006, when it accounted for 6.1 percent of all marriages. It stood at 3.3 percent, or 20,976 cases, in 2015.
According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, 635,156 couples married in 2015. Of those, 170,181, or 26.8 percent, were marriages either between divorced persons, or between a divorced person and a previously unmarried person. The rest were between men and women marrying for the first time.
An official said the trend could be the result of changing perceptions among Japanese to whom the idea of divorce and remarrying is perhaps becoming more acceptable.
Of the marriages in which only one person was divorced, 63,588, or 10.0 percent of all marriages, involved a divorced man, while 45,268, or 7.1 percent of all marriages, involved a divorced woman. Marriages between divorced persons accounted for 61,325, or 9.7 percent of all marriages, according to the data.
The average age of couples marrying for the first time was also the highest in 2015, with men being 30.7 years old and women being 29.0 years old, the latter matching the average in 2014. That is up by 1.2 years for both men and women from 10 years earlier.
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