As for this contributed column "The reason why we cannot stop the progress of the low birth rate, unless we are given a legal status similar to marriage format in fact marriage", I wrote a little about a civil law before the WW2 In the draft version.

I deeply understood that "marriage" is really just a system.

----- Excerpt Original draft (abstract) from here -----

- It seems to think "love is essential to marriage" now, but the idea itself, historically, fairly avant-garde.

- The Civil Code of the Meiji era, they could not get married without the consent of the parents until 30 years old for men.

- Furthermore, in the even post-war amendment to the Civil Code, "cooperation aid of direct line of descent" was being considered.

- Speaking roughly, the provisions for marriage, established a total of six (parents of both sides and a party), has been rejected by "majority".

- This means that even in the post-war parliamentary democracy, the requirement of "only on the mutual consent of the two" was on the verge to be crushed.

By the way, there is not description in the current law (Civil Code), that "love is prerequisite to marriage" at all.

----- To here -----

Well, I think that conventional wisdom should not necessarily being reflected in the law.

Anyway we seem to be able to be born in in extremely rare era that the linkage of love and marriage is thought as normal".