A 35-year-old Japanese man has come under the spotlight for having four wives and three small children but hasn’t worked in over 10 years.
35-year-old Ryuta Watanabe of Sapporo has become an overnight sensation in his home country due to an unconventional lifestyle. Watanabe reportedly lives with three of his four wives and relies on them for most of the family’s financial needs, as he hasn’t had a job in the last 10 years. The polygamous family’s daily life was recently featured on Japan’s AbemaTV news program Abema Prime and sparked a heated debate in Japan, a country where polygamy is officially banned. To bypass Japan’s polygamy law, Ryuta’s four wives are currently in what is known as a ‘common-law relationship’ with him, but they plan to register their marriages and then divorce him, one at a time, so they can take the surname ‘Watanabe’ and pass it on to their children.
I simply love women, so before I knew it, I found myself in this situation,
Watanabe told Abema TV.
Dog lovers will sympathize. If you raise one puppy, don’t you want to raise another? I like women and love them all equally.
The 35-year-old unemployed man lives with three of his wives, and they all occupy a bedroom along with their respective children. His first wife is 27 years old, while his second and third are 24 and 22, respectively. He has a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old baby with his first wife, and a 5-month baby with his second. Ryu didn’t specify why his fourth wife lives separately, but his other partners confirmed that they do have another ‘sister wife’.
Ryuta described his four wives as “less than family, but more than friends,” a description none of the women seemed to have a problem with.
