In recent years, however, there has been a spreading recognition among the Japanese public that something【5】is happening in people's attitudes toward marriage.
When they began to have adequate food, clothing and shelter and thus became able to【6】their attention to other matters, the Japanese for the first time【7】a renewed look at the question of marriage. In the 1990s, people began to ask "What on earth is marrage anyway？" and to talk about marriage itself.
In Japan, the proportion of men still unmarried in their thirties reached about 20 percent in the national census taken in 1985 and the【8】apparently exceeded 30 percent in 1995. The proportion of unmarried women in the 25-29 age bracket has been increasing【9】about 5 percent every five years until it is now nearly 50 percent.
What are the real reasons women choose not to marry？ Early on, two were【10】: women were now better educated and more women were interested in working outside the home. Many women have become【11】independent, acquiring enough self-confidence to【12】a meaningful life outside of marriage. And【13】seems to be a wide gap in the way men and women view marriage. Women generally believe that,【14】women's roles in Japan's postwar society have become diversified, men have essentially remained unchanged.【15】such circumstances, communication between the sexes is, in fact, far from easy.
Besides that, in the postwar Japan, individualism has begun to take【16】. The 50 years since the end of the war are regarded as process of a【17】from the family-centered to the individual-centered way of thinking. In Japan today, society has matured to a point【18】it now tolerates a diversity of marriage styles which were unthinkable not very long ago. In the future, such tolerance is almost【19】to increase. But a headlong plunge toward unbridled individualism is also dangerous. The ideal【20】may be to achieve a complementary fusion of the collectivism of Japan's traditional community and the individualism of the new age.
(1)

A. practiced
B. conducted
C. involved
D. devised