(Not) alone: Single life and solo-sociality in a familialist society

In this paper, we examine changing perceptions of being single in Japan and trace the emergence of the trend of “doing things alone” (sorokatsu) and changes in its meaning and uptake. We focus on singles as marginal actors in a familialist society, recognizing that while the proportion of unmarried (including divorced and widowed) adult Japanese is increasing, typicality and marginality are not statistical categories but rather discursive constructs. Using select data from an original large-scale survey on COVID and practices of intimacy among unmarried Japanese aged 25–49 years, contextualized with data from long-term fieldwork and media and popular literature, this paper addresses the ways that ideas about being single and acting alone have been modified, amplified and challenged over the last two decades, in the emergence of a so-called hyper-solo-society. We find that in a resolutely family- and marriage-centric society, a growing and heterogenous group of singles of “marriageable age” is navigating changing socio-economic realities, and, in so doing, (re)negotiating what a “normal” adult life looks like or could look like.