The Japanese wedding industry, which has not been able to escape the recession since COVID-19, is considering a new survival strategy. This is due to the spread of “Nashihon,” which only registers the marriage and omits the ceremony, or “Photohon,” which replaces it with a photo shoot, as the tricky traditional wedding ceremony disappears.
Recently, the Yomiuri Shimbun shed light on the difficulties of the industry as a whole, saying that the crisis of the existence of local wedding halls is becoming a reality. The wedding hall of Gifu Prefecture, Il Cuore, decided to close at the end of this month. It was a local attraction that opened in 2014 and produced about 500 couples, but it could not overcome the changing situation. “Management was smooth before COVID-19, but the number of profitable weddings has been halved recently,” the company’s CEO said. “It is regrettable that the wedding hall will be closed.” Amid financial difficulties, employees even helped with funeral services for their livelihood.
The figures also point to a crisis. According to Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the number of marriages in 2024 stood at 485,092 – less than half of the peak in 1972 (1,099,984 couples). The rate of weddings itself dropped sharply. Japan’s Imperial Data Bank (TDB) put the size of the wedding hall market at 488.1 billion yen in 2024, which was only 80% of 616.3 billion yen in 2018 before COVID-19. This means that daily life has recovered since the end of the pandemic, but the wedding market has not returned to its previous size. In the TDB survey, 35.6% of wedding hall operating companies recorded a deficit as of fiscal year 2023, and it was analyzed that the following year did not fully recover to pre-COVID levels.
Bankruptcy, closure and businesses are also continuing. According to the Tokyo Research Institute of Commerce and Industry, 13 cases of bankruptcy and 37 cases of closure occurred in the wedding industry in 2024.
The Yomiuri Shimbun interpreted that the background of the recession is not only a decline in population but also structural changes. During the bubble economy in the 1980s, luxurious “Hadehorns” such as gondolas and large cake cutting were popular, but after the bubble burst, simple “Jimihorns” that were sung only by close acquaintances and “at-home weddings” that were played at home appeared. Analysts say that after a long-term recession, high prices, and COVID-19, “Nashihorns,” which do not eat at all, have become the trend among young people.
The culture of “Cospa (cost-effectiveness) and Taifa (visuality) importance” spread to the younger generation also plays a role. Rather than spending millions of yen on ceremonies, there has been a widespread perception that it is reasonable to attribute the cost to honeymoon or housing expenses.
Wedding companies whose survival is at stake are changing their business models. A wedding hall in Mie Prefecture has been remodeled as a small cafe and event venue with 40 people by splitting a large banquet hall that can accommodate 300 people. A wedding hall in Kobe City offered “Solo Wedding” for unmarried women.
Yuichiro Sakai, a family sociology professor at Keio University, said, “As the tendency to prioritize economic rationality grows, existing weddings, which include the traditional patriarchy of ‘Men earn and women support them’, are being neglected.”
JULIE KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
