A Man Rejected 2,000 Times in 4 Years of Blind Dates Starts a Marriage Agency

Rejected Repeatedly Due to Living with Parents and Low Income
Founded a Marriage Research Institute Offering Free Counseling After Achieving Marriage Success

A man in Japan who failed 2,000 blind dates has become a hot topic after founding a marriage information company based on his experience.

On the 12th, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (SCMP) and others reported the story of a man named Yoshio (44), who lives in Shizuoka Prefecture.

Yoshio earned a master's degree in science from a Japanese university and began planning marriage eight years ago. He joined several marriage information companies and started going on blind dates in earnest.

However, he was rejected nearly 2,000 times over four years. Most women showed no interest just by looking at his profile or cut off contact after meeting once.

One reason cited was that Yoshio is an only son living with his parents.

Yoshio had lived independently for 15 years but moved back to live with his parents after getting a job to be closer to his workplace. However, many women saw this as a sign that he had not become independent from his parents as an adult, which made them avoid him.

The decisive reason for his failures was his low income. The average annual income standard for men suggested by Japanese marriage information companies is about 5.5 million yen (52 million KRW), but Yoshio’s annual income was only about 3.5 million yen (approximately 33 million KRW). On one occasion, a date laughed at his small car, saying, “I don’t even know what brand this car is.”

Nevertheless, Yoshio did not give up and eventually met his current spouse through a matchmaking app and succeeded in getting married.

He did not stop there and decided to turn his experience into a valuable lesson. Convinced that he gained conversation skills and dating planning tips from countless blind dates, he established the “Yoshio Marriage Research Institute,” offering free counseling to those struggling with romance and marriage.

After hearing Yoshio’s story, many on social networking services (SNS) praised him as “amazing,” but some pointed out that the reason for his 2,000 failures was thinking about marriage without a solid economic foundation.

According to Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 32% of men and 23.79% of women aged 50 and over living in Tokyo are unmarried. In particular, it is known that many people in Japan give up on marriage due to financial problems.