Abstract
International marriages between Japanese men and Asian women started in rural Japan in the mid 1980's and continue up to today. This paper studies marriage migrants' adaptation and acceptance processes and the social acculturation of rural Japan. Its analysis is based on the result of the survey of foreign residents in Minami-Uonuma-shi in Niigata implemented in 2007 and the four in-depth interviews with marriage migrants there.
We find that:（1）the channels of international marriage are multiple, and its choice depends on both the stage of socioeconomic development of the sending countries; major countries of origin of women marriage migrants shifted from South Korean to China; and the gender factor is often found to be more important than economic factors for marriage migration;（2）women marriage migrants have developed their capability as an active agents of social change, contrary to the stereotype image of victims established by the media and the earlier literature in 1980s and 1990s;（3）social networks associated with child-rearing, schools, working places, women's association and neighborhood community are all important for the process of the adaptation of marriage migrants and their acceptance by their families and communities;（4）about 180 women marriage migrants（1.0％ of the households）live in the city, and their fraction is higher in the peripheral of the city with decreasing population; but international marriage is not likely to solve the problem of break of the family tree;（5）only 13 out of 45 marriage migrants plan to naturalize to Japan and some of them plan to return to their home countries when they get old or when their child-rearing is over. The last observation indicates that the level of adaptation and acceptance of women marriage migrants in rural Japan is not yet well established.
