The Internet woods are thick with mail order brides from Russia, China, and the Philippines as well as dozens of third world countries. Nevertheless many men prefer Japanese women they are thought to make the best wives in the world. But now that Japan is a developed nation, however, are mail order brides still available from Japan?

Well, yes - but not nearly in as great a number as before. Ironically, the entire mail order bride phenomenon started out decades ago with Japanese-American men would write to their families back home asking help in finding a Japanese bride (in fact, arranged marriages are not at all uncommon in Japan even today). The man's parents would find a candidate and the two would marry despite barely knowing each other – they might even meet for the first time at the wedding. The practice of arranged marriages - marrying a bride you barely know, chosen by your parents - was the rule rather than the exception in Japan until recently. Since at that time the US was far richer than Japan, Japanese-Americans could easily find a bride from the Old Country – to marry for economic reasons only was thought quite normal. Due to the Western romantic tradition, this practice struck most Americans as rather strange, and the term “mail order bride” came into being.

These days quite a few American men are looking for a “mail order bride” from another country. There are a number of reasons for this. Although Japan is now a developed country, there are still quite a few of Japanese women promoting themselves as mail order brides on the Internet. One advantage of Japan being a developed country is that Japanese women are far less likely than women from third world nations to marry only for economic reasons – that's right, you're may have to win her heart before she will marry you! But hey, that should be a good sign.

The Western stereotype of Japanese women as submissive handmaidens is not necessarily true anymore, and that applies double to mail order brides. Because of the relatively low status of women in Japanese society, a lot of Japanese women seek to marry Western men because they believe them to be less authoritarian than Japanese men. Yeah, it's also true that “traditional” Japanese women are more submissive. But traditional women rarely marry foreign men – after all, marrying a foreigner (and living overseas) is not a particularly traditional thing to do. Nevertheless, after living in Japan for several years, I speak from experience when I say that Japanese women are by and large quite caring and considerate (and some of them are LOTS of fun!). If you are looking for a foreign bride, in my opinion Japanese women are your best bet.