There's still something to this, though maybe not as the parent comment worded it. Culture in modern Japan is significantly different from "most of recorded his

There's still something to this, though maybe not as the parent comment worded it. Culture in modern Japan is significantly different from "most of recorded history." If the cultural belief is that you need a house, car, and the means to support a family as a pre-requisite for dating, then maybe you just drop out of the idea if those things seem unattainable. In poorer SE Asian countries, such as the Philippines, you don't have these same expectations. That country is still a place where people barely surviving off a farm have large families. There is also the factor where the Catholic Church resists the idea of birth control.