How many idols find true happiness? Of course, the majority who do tend to retire and live the rest of their lives in quiet obscurity. The ones who remain in the news often do so because their post-idol lives are filled with hiccups, personal or professional. If you just read the celebrity news, you might be forgiven for thinking that all former music and gravure idols were divorced or rocked by one scandal or other. Nonetheless, we suspect that divorce rates among idols is a bit higher than the general populace, perhaps because their jobs and the closed nature of the idol industry means ...

OK, our headline is a bit deceptive, but the gist is essentially true. It's been years in the offing and it might finally be happening: the law forbidding women from remarrying after a divorce is going to change. Currently, a woman in Japan is legally unable to remarry straight after a divorce. She has to wait 100 days. Her ex-husband, though, is free to marry someone new without waiting. The law was ostensibly introduced in the 19th century to the civil code to avoid disputes over a child's father. The "cooling-off" period, which was six months until 2016, was put in place in case the ...