Quote:
Originally Posted by glowsilver
On the original subject:
I'd assume the reason that girls can marry at a younger age than boys is so that they can start having children while young and fertile, and those children will be legitimate. At 16, a girl will have finished middle school (as far as I'm aware it is not mandatory to go to high school in Japan) and if she gets pregnant she stands a chance of the birth not causing her too much damage, whereas a younger girl is more likely to have medical problems because her own body is still developing. Japanese law seems to take the view of children being the main reason to get married - along the same lines, a divorced woman must wait six months before getting married again, so that if she gets pregnant there won't be a question of which husband is the baby's father (Well ... there might be, but that's the idea)
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Maybe way back when, but that doesn't really make sense now. The age of consent in most prefectures in Japan is 18, so the only way a 16-year-old girl could 'legally' get pregnant is with a boy who is also underage. If the boy can't marry the girl to make a legitimate child, what's the point? And I doubt such a thing happens very often anyway; the average age of first-time mothers in Japan is 29.2 years old.