Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex

by Libertatea • 13 years ago

314 254 13 years ago

smegel3• 13 years ago

Ah, the sordid British fascination with sex in East Asia raises its head again...

Did you read the article? Japan seems like it will have some serious social ramifications of this in the upcoming years. That's worthy of discussion.

smegel3• 13 years ago

Yes, but you can talk about demographic trends without delving into fetishism and sexualization. As strange as it sounds, there isn't much relation between sex and the choice to have children, from my understanding Japanese women are rejecting motherhood because it cancels whatever limited career opportunities they may have had. In other words, like most demographic trends, it is driven by economics.

Of course to a sexually repressed Brit walking through Shibuya with a childish smirk and a hard-on surrounded by sexually voracious vixens (in his mind at least), sex is everywhere and needs to at least be a sub theme on any reporting on Japan. Cringeworthy.

einhverfr11• 13 years ago

It is interesting as a somewhat projected view of Europe (and the US too if certain political groups get their way).

alexeisadeski38• 13 years ago

Ah, the sordid British fascination with casting scorn upon some healthy perversions...

seivan• 13 years ago

There was a really cool (aren't they usually?) Vice documentary about all the intimacy substitutes available for people in Japan. Easy to google up.

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

Here's the link http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-lo...

fidotron• 13 years ago

And specifically about the host club phenomenon, but surprising in other ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Happiness_Space%3A_T...

dthunt3• 13 years ago

I would note that there is a particular fascination with Japan and sex, and that google is unlikely to give you an accurate depiction at the frequency of weird in Japan.

I suspect that weird exists in any population of sufficient size.

camus24• 13 years ago

Who is buying all these JAV videos that make US gonzo look like Disney cartoons ? too much of it is definetly not good for the mind, especially those about v...t or o...p.....s

networked2• 13 years ago

I don't know what "v...t" or "o...p.....s" means but consider that you might be confusing the cause and effect here: assuming that there's correlation between consuming $WEIRD_PORN and being unable to have normal relationships [1] it may not be that people become unable to have those relationships due to exposure to $WEIRD_PORN so much as that people who turn to $WEIRD_PORN were already unable to have them. This creates demand and $WEIRD_PORN gets produced.

[1] "Normal" a defined by a given society.

Edit: removed a comparison of the parent poster's argument to "violent video games make people violent".

camus24• 13 years ago

My point is about porn in general. I'm from a generation that did not have access to porn easily. today some 12 yo kids are already addicted to porn,and not the softcore stuff. There will be huge consequences.

I dont think i'm confused about causality here. If you cant get excited unless you see or do extreme stuff, you're going to have a pretty difficult libido,as in reality not that many women are willing to "perfom" these "stunts".

I dont think one needs to be already interested in extreme fetish in order to get hooked to it,the more one looks at porn the more one seeks extreme stuffs. It's like any other addiction.

I don't know what "v...t" or "o...p.....s"

Nevermind , i was saying that japanese porn is well known for its extreme fetish.

thaumasiotes2• 13 years ago

Frankly, I think the parallel between "weird porn makes you weird sexually" and "violent video games make you violent" is pretty straightforward.

lmm2• 13 years ago

too much of it is definetly not good for the mind

Citation needed. One could easily argue that the ready availability of "extreme" porn is what keeps the Japanese rape (and indeed general crime) rates so low.

chiaro2• 13 years ago

Low in comparison to what? The country has female-only trains in rush hours to prevent 'Chikan', or sexual assault. And of course "too much of it is bad for you", it's ridiculous to argue otherwise. (Unless what you're saying is "there's no such thing as too much porn", which is another matter entirely.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=XV4...

usernew18173• 13 years ago

http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-lo...

m_mueller8• 13 years ago

The subject is interesting, especially because I'm married to a Japanese - but man do I hate articles that go round and round like this one. Here, have a little bit of a sociological hypothesis - but let's not go too deep for your little brains shall we? Here, have a little bit of anecdotal evidence instead. Enough of that? Alright, let's start over again. [...] Oh I'm outa time, let's end the article now, kthxbye.

It's probably too much to ask - but I think there should be something in between a scientific journal and common journalism. In technology we have some pretty insightful articles coming up in blogs now and then, articles where sources are cited and you can go deeper on any subject if you like. Why can't traditional journalists not use the web the way it is meant to?

usernew18173• 13 years ago

why does saying "married to a Japanese" sound so much more awkward then saying "married to an American/Canadian"

m_mueller8• 13 years ago

well it doesn't to me - but maybe that's because I'm not American? Why does it sound weird to you?

dec0dedab0de• 13 years ago

I think its the soft sound at the end, but I'm not exactly sure why.

chad_oliver• 13 years ago

I think it sounds weird to some people because they're used to "Japanese" being a adjective rather than a demonym. When used in an unexpected way, any word sounds weird.

nl• 13 years ago

I'm married to a Britisher (which is not used in Great Britan anyway) sounds similarly awkward. Married to an Englishman/Welshman/Irishman works, but is gender (and England/Wales/Ireland) specific.

I'm married to a Scott works though.

Not sure there is a general purpose word you can use to say "I'm married to someone from Britian".

creamyhorror• 13 years ago

It's as simple as:

- In standard English, "Japanese", "Chinese", etc. are now used only as adjectives and not nouns (although the noun usage used to be acceptable). So you can't correctly say "a Japanese came in" any more than you can say "a Swedish came in." http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/29887-grammar...

- "The Japanese" remains valid as a way to refer to the people of that nation collectively.

- "-(i)an" endings are both nouns and adjectives, so Canadians, Germans, and Ankh-Morporkians are all fine.

- "-man/woman" endings are no longer applied except where they've become idiomatic, so we have Welshman and Frenchman, but not Chineseman or Japaneseman. ("Chinaman" is, of course, derogatory.)

- For an exhaustive rundown of the topic, see "Demonym" on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonym

- In more academic or historical writing, you might still find "-ese" in use as a noun ending, but it sounds faintly racist and outdated: "More than a hundred Chinese up to that date had been interrogated by police." http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=Yqemz6q_nQYC&lpg=PA74&ot... (The same might apply to "-ish" words, but I'm not certain.)

(To throw_away) Like you, I've done my fair share of correcting Chinese speakers about this usage, too. But I've seen regular use of "a Chinese" in various older English writing, so the usage is at least historically justified, and probably slipped into older instructional texts. It doesn't surprise me that some of the textbooks used in China may not have kept up with changes in usage over the last few decades - in the first place, English teaching there was almost zilch in the past and remains very spotty today.

vvvvvv

ivix2• 13 years ago

Because it should be 'married to a jap' but for annoying and outdated historical reasons, people will think you are racist if you say that.

einhverfr11• 13 years ago

+1, especially on wishing there were more really good social sciences blogs out there covering issues like this.

One of the big problems of course is the fact that while outsiders can see dynamics of and sometimes critique cultures, such critiques are necessarily incomplete (well all critiques are necessarily incomplete but outsider ones are especially likely to be).

But on your final question, I think one of the big issues is that the corporate media insists on pushing everything into narratives the corporations can understand. For example, in the US I tend to associate with people from a wide variety of backgrounds politically (and talk politics, as taboo as that is) and one thing I have noticed is that while the media tends to see social conservatives as the "sex police" the social conservative movement is the largest movement in the US which questions the desirability of Capitalism on an economic level (and the critiques are really interesting), but that doesn't work for corporations, so....

So here you have a corporate media organization engaging in difficult cross-cultural criticism. While it is an interesting article, it says as much about Western corporations as it does about Japan.

eli_gottlieb• 13 years ago

the social conservative movement is the largest movement in the US which questions the desirability of Capitalism on an economic level (and the critiques are really interesting)

Care to point them out?

m_mueller8• 13 years ago

1) I'm fine with incomplete arguments if there is at least some attempt at an analysis shown instead of just a meaningless collection of facts and anecdotes. In that case the engaged reader could benefit by gasp thinking about it for himself.

2) So the problem is that corporate media is politically streamlined? Yes, I absolutely think so. In Switzerland we have an interesting weekly magazine called 'Weltwoche', which allows rather extreme opinion pieces of all political sides to appear unedited. I enjoyed that a lot, until the selection of articles began to appear biased to the right. I think the idea is still great - give me unfiltered opinions and analysis, instead just filter by the 'intellectual depth' if you will. It'd be black coffee in magazine form.

bayesianhorse2• 13 years ago

Maybe one should ask why narratives instead of detailed scientific analysis is voted up on hackernews? Do the "corporate media organizations" control hackernews now?

paborden• 13 years ago

Are there ANY good social sciences blogs covering issues like this? Looking for recs ...

lsc• 13 years ago

the social conservative movement is the largest movement in the US which questions the desirability of Capitalism on an economic level (and the critiques are really interesting)

Huh. Reference? Perhaps it's because I just don't know enough conservative folks, but I've never heard of a mainstream socially conservative anti-capitalist dialogue.

If what you say is true, either I have a pretty huge hole in my political knowledge (that or we're just using 'socially conservative' or 'capitalist' to mean different things.) Especially if it's the former, I'd like to close that hole.

louwrentius• 13 years ago

The whole story seems to be based around stuff that some ex-dominatrix is telling.

steven20122• 13 years ago

What do you mean using anecdotal evidence instead? The author cites data and surveys, which clearly show the problem.

"Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060."

"The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all."

"A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way."

"Official alarmism doesn't help. Fewer babies were born here in 2012 than any year on record. (This was also the year, as the number of elderly people shoots up, that adult incontinence pants outsold baby nappies in Japan for the first time.)"

m_mueller8• 13 years ago

That would be fine if the article was called "Japanese people don't start enough families" - however, this wouldn't be an interesting headline, since it's years old news and most informed people know this already[1]. But it isn't, is it? It's asking the question why. I can ask such questions as well, but if I'm going to write an article about it, I'd hope to come up with some analysis to try to answer it - and this is exactly where the journalist got lazy and just cobbled up whatever anecdotes he can attribute to actual Japanese people saying them, cause, you know, they must be at the source of this, right?

[1] Although I'm not yet sure whether more babies is actually what Japan needs right now - looking at their population density, going easy on the baby making might be ok for a while, if there is a plan in place on how to turn it around once the population has fallen to more sustainable levels (and also how to pay for everyone's pensions in the meantime).

xdd• 13 years ago

The journalist failed theguardian.

1.no actual data supported. This is more like: I used 5 people to prove Japanese stop having sex.

2.no study of source.

just imagination, I doubt if this is FBI undercover job tried to ruin theguardian's name.

graycat5• 13 years ago

Why can't traditional journalists not use the web the way it is meant to?

First, just because they are "traditional journalists".

Second, because they got lots of eyeballs with this article.

Flip-per• 13 years ago

I agree, I've read too many articles like this one. It's picking up a topic, citing something here and there, some nice stories and persons (a dominatrix, that has to be interesting!), without any point or additional information. It's inflating once 3-paragraph article up to several pages out of nowhere. I like reading longer articles and books but I want a bit more than random chit-chat. But hey, I now know that some Japanese dominatrix squeezed the testicles of an army general in North Korea. Hooray.

namlem• 13 years ago

There is. It's called a university press release.

raverbashing2• 13 years ago

In the midst of all, this seems to be one of the best parts of it:

"Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me."

Great, so if a woman marries she loses independence and her own income, and then people don't know why women don't want to marry?

Same thing here:

"Romantic commitment seems to represent burden and drudgery, from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan to the uncertain expectations of a spouse and in-laws"

intelliot2• 13 years ago

Notably, it appears that prior generations had higher birthrates because women were not expected to participate in the workforce. They didn't want to and/or weren't allowed to. They were treated differently than men.

A potential downside of making women equal to men is that they become more similar. They don't need each other. They don't complement each other anymore. Opposites attract, but if women are expected to succeed in the same way as men, then the prior balance is lost.

randomafrican4• 13 years ago

It's more an imbalance between social expectations and modern living.

More conservative societies see a steeper decline in birthrate as women participation in the workforce increases.

That's why France has one of the highest birthrate in Europe for instance.

VLM4• 13 years ago

Even worse the equality argument goes both directions not just women trying the former man lifestyle, but the other way around as the article barely touches on the two decades of economic stagnation issue.

Its not just salaryman and stay at home wife turning into salaryman and salarywoman, its unemployed dude and salarywoman at the same time.

kaitai• 13 years ago

Happily, I now get to marry my husband because I want to be with him, instead of simply making a bid for economic survival and trading sex & childbirth for food & housing. As someone living in the US, I also get to continue my work which brings me great pleasure and independence. There are certainly difficulties and compromises, but I for one am delighted that I'm no longer required by law to resign my position upon marriage. My husband seems pretty happy that he's not the sole breadwinner, too, as he can contemplate things like quitting work and going back to school.

This messy compromise seems impossible for women in Japan.

dclowd99013• 13 years ago

Another potential downside: It doubles the size of the work force. Suddenly there's too many people for a limited pool of jobs, and everyone who works is miserable and makes far too little.

I wonder sometimes if maybe we've swung too far in the direction of gender equality, where now we shame people into believing their self worth can only be found through their professional success, rather than letting them live a life they more care to live. How many times have I seen an article grace the HN homepage defending the idea of being a stay-at-home-whatever?

klipt2• 13 years ago

from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan

Well they are living on an island. You can't grow your population forever in a finite space without increased competition.

muraiki2• 13 years ago

I recall reading an article saying that there is actually quite a lot of undeveloped / rural land in Japan, but people tend to live in the largest cities because large businesses want to be close to the areas of greatest political influence.

netcan2• 13 years ago

There is something about Japan that really brings home the meaning of 'foreign' to me.

I think that being the first rich, advanced large country that isn't western is the reason. On paper, they have a similar relationship with money, technology, their religion and traditional culture. I can't explain the strangeness away with those differences.

When I read something like this about some trend or supposed cultural pathology cropping up, I have nothing to connect it to. I don't intuitively get where its coming from or why. Not even a hint. I don't know whether to dismiss it as conservatives concerned with something harmless, some fringe phenomenon or whatever.

DasIch• 13 years ago

Actually this phenomenon isn't that foreign. Less children being born, a falling number of "serious" relationships etc. are all things that can be observed in any technologically advanced society.

Japan is just an extreme case because their current set of values doesn't deviate as much from more traditional values, which escalates the problem.

Germany is actually somewhat similiar to Japan when it comes to these issues and while the results are by far not as extreme the reasons are very similar: lack of government support for modern types of families and traditional values that still have a strong impact on how children are supposed to be raised.

_random_• 13 years ago

Unless you make your country wide-open to all sorts of immigrants. Than your birth-rate will be "OK".

JoeAltmaier3• 13 years ago

None of my childres/nieces/nephews are married or have childred. They are all approaching their 30s. Something is going on.

In a previous generation ALL would be married, ALL would have at least one child.

emiliobumachar5• 13 years ago

Is there hard evidence that this is bad?

Resource depletion is among the highest risks to civilization. Seems straightforward that severe population decline should be desired, and voluntary refraining from reproduction should be welcome.

(Please don't just extrapolate the trend till extinction. See http://xkcd.com/605/. )

intelliot2• 13 years ago

Is there convincing evidence that resource depletion is among the highest risks to civilization? Much of what I've seen shows the opposite: for example, China is a rising superpower largely because of their huge population. Having more people means more potential productivity, and that could lead to more prosperity.

On the other hand, small countries with few people are usually able to accomplish little. Places with few inhabitants are considered rural and have a lower standard of living than places with high extremely high population density, like cities.

emiliobumachar5• 13 years ago

I'm counting war over the increasingly scarce resources as part of the risk, so the current influence of mildly scarce resources over politics is evidence.

I agree with your point that, from a nationalist perspective, population size is basically nation size.

Osmium• 13 years ago

I think the concern is an ageing population rather than a shrinking one. Too many older people, no longer working, who need care or support and not enough younger people to provide it.

LeonidasXIV• 13 years ago

Too many older people, no longer working, who need care or support and not enough younger people to provide it.

But this will be a trend that autocorrects itself after some time, as less elder people will be there in the future. Also, the younger people if both working will create more prosperity than being married with one working and the other one staying at home.

In the short term this sounds bad, but long term doesn't seem that worrisome.

randomafrican4• 13 years ago

We're not Pandas. Ressource depletion is only a problem if our ressource consumption doesnt evolve. And it will evolve.

threeseed4• 13 years ago

Except that people will only evolve once the resources are completely gone.

The underlying problem is that sustainable products almost always have a price premium attached to them. And because the benefits of sustainability are indirect it's hard to convince people to pay more.

emiliobumachar5• 13 years ago

True enough, but such evolution, in the purely darwinian sense of the word, may involve a lot of war and atrocities.

In the worst case, it could bring the bloody end of civilization as we know it.

I agree that society and technology could evolve us through a much more desirable path. But the more time we can buy for that to happen, the better.

Sagat3• 13 years ago

What if it evolves in the wrong way? Plenty of emerging middle classes in developing countries are now looking to join the American-style unsustainable lifestyle movement.

threeseed4• 13 years ago

It's bad because Japan has an extremely low net migration rate. For comparison Australia has 16x that of Japan. So whilst globally yes we should be aiming to reduce the total population Japan specifically has serious problems.

squirejons2• 13 years ago

yeah, less mass immigration means a lower supply of labor, which means higher wages for workers. That's horrible!

Oh, wait, you were speaking from the perspective of the corporations and rich investors who have to pay wages.

Funny how you adopted that perspective when you are a worker yourself.....

einhverfr11• 13 years ago

Well, the fundamental problem is a demographic one. In the end, the elderly are always cared for by the young so if you have a lot of elderly and not very many young, this becomes a real problem.

Ideally, the birthrate would be close to the replacement rate. Much lower and you run into very significant problems. If you want to draw down the population, a birth rate of say, 90-95% of the replacement rate would not be so bad.

klipt2• 13 years ago

In the end, the elderly are always cared for by the young so if you have a lot of elderly and not very many young, this becomes a real problem.

Fun fact: an evolutionary explanation for "witch hunts" is that when the tribe is low on food, they're an excuse to get rid of less useful / influential elderly people. Which is why they happen more in resource constrained developing countries than rich developed ones.

But it goes to show that if young people feel that the elderly are more burdensome than useful, they may find a way to get rid of them.

Sagat3• 13 years ago

The problem is that not everyone is making less progeny. Japanese and European populations may be in decline, but African, Asian, Arabic, and Hispanic ones are growing at a brisk pace.

So yes, it's pretty bad for some people to limit births. You are essentially diminishing your influence and putting yourself at risk of being swallowed up by other cultures.

duopixel• 13 years ago

Population growth rate is declining all over the world, but the effect is more pronounced in developed countries. As standard of living increases people tend to have less children.

pjan• 13 years ago

How about "Human Resource Depletion"?

The system only works when there's growth... a huge decline in population (hence births, hence sexual activity ...) is the biggest fear of all governments, as it deflates the foundations current countries/systems/power balances/... are built on. It's also the reason why worldwide "family values" and "the traditional family (unit) as cornerstone of the society" are main political points, independent of culture, religion, ...

drjesusphd2• 13 years ago

The system only works when there's growth

That sounds like a bug.

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

Because parents and schools in the developed world have stopped raising kids and have instead opted for 18+ years of babysitting. Part of the problem is that we don't even know what we're about anymore, so we don't know what lessons and principles to pass on to our children. It's a wonder that the problem isn't far worse than it is already.

einhverfr11• 13 years ago

One of the major things I see though in the article is the way in which modern corporate capitalism isolates individuals and tries to place career above family.

alexeisadeski38• 13 years ago

You mean how individual people choose to place career above family? Don't see how modern corporate capitalism is doing that.

veidr3• 13 years ago

This is a stupid article, and young people in Japan have not stopped having sex.

What westerners might call 'casual sex' -- sex without the framework of a relationships that implies various other promieses/committments -- is normal, and also not likely to be spoken about frankly, especially to a reporter, and much less a British one.

Sometimes I'll witness a young woman asked about it at a social gathering (as people have a few drinks and speak more freely). "I don't have anybody... I can't remember the last time I slept with somebody," she might say. What she means is that she doesn't have a steady boyfriend, and thus it is certainly none of your business who she's fucking.

Or I will see a guy asked about it. "Well, romance is too complicated with all I've got going on... I've learned to live without it," he might say, with just the right amount of sheepishness. What he means is that he is seeking only sex that doesn't come with implied commitments and hassle.

These two people might very well end up leaving together.

westicle• 13 years ago

This certainly isn't a phenomenon exclusive to Japan either.

I know plenty of western young people who have no interest in marriage, procreation or families. Maybe they're more interested in their work. Maybe they're more interested in rock-climbing. Maybe they're more interested in Pokemon.

More power to them, I say.

jrs99• 13 years ago

I think it's a bigger more existential problem that young people these days have.

JoeAltmaier3• 13 years ago

Maybe they have too many electronic substitutes. There's nothing in the human makeup that says "will procreate even in the presence of unlimited sexual gratification elsewhere". Its certainly something to be studied and understood.

001sky• 13 years ago

Anecdotally, this is directly correlated to the price of real-estate, and other parts of the world are only now catching up to Japan in this regards.

Crake3• 13 years ago

I am definitely more interested in Pokemon.

emiliobumachar5• 13 years ago

Do you think that the Japanese would be less inclined to speak frankly about their sex lives with foreign reporters or pollsters than, say, Koreans, Italians or Americans?

hclee• 13 years ago

Haha. They can't resist hormones and desire. Platonic love forever is lying. Japanese could do better as they have highly advanced porn and sexual industry.

po2• 13 years ago

Japanese are less inclined to speak frankly about anything to anyone. A western reporter is probably more likely to take what they say at face value, without understanding the subtlety of their response and then report it as truth, especially when it supports a click-bait headline.

lmm2• 13 years ago

Yes. Japanese culture has an extreme level of politeness that you don't see in Italy or America (I don't know enough about Korea to comment). Even the British are more open.

veidr3• 13 years ago

Yes, I do think just that.

Not only about their sex lives, but just about all manner of private things. This is a culture where when you buy a book at a bookstore, they wrap it in a cover for you so that people around you won't know what you are reading.

Many drug stores have extra-opaque dark bags that you can request when you buy stuff you would rather keep private -- don't want the person next to you on the train knowing you have tampons or -- heaven forbid -- hemmhoroid creme. (Of course a small subset of those train riders won't feel any special compunction to hide their 800-page comic book featuring anthropomorphized household appliances coming live at night and raping strangely compliant schoolgirls, but those people are the exception that proves my rule.)

I think the Japanese would be about the least open about the intimate details of their sex lives than basically any modern advanced democratic population.

guerrilla• 13 years ago

I have to say, this is the kind of thing I was thinking while reading the entire article. One of the things I remember most about working in Japan is the different manners in which people would answer questions. Everything did seem so extremely indirect, yet not necessarily dishonest.

steven20122• 13 years ago

Why is it stupid? Obviously they don't mean every single Japanese young person hasn't stopped having sex. What the author means is that as a trend, they've stopped having sex, as evidenced by the declining population, the lack of young people in relationships, etc. From the data they cited from the surveys, it seems pretty incontrovertible that there is some sort of problem, despite your own personal anecdotes.

kalleboo4• 13 years ago

Neither "declining population" nor "lack of young people in relationships" indicates people not having sex. It only indicates people not wanting families or kids.

veidr3• 13 years ago

It's stupid because they have multiplied a couple anecdotes, conflated decreased reproductive output and formalized relationships with a decrease in actual sex, and gotten all breathless and hyperbolic about it.

There's no evidence of any trend that young people in Japan have stopped having sex. That is what I was trying to point out: not being in an old-fashioned relationship, and not actually bearing children, does not any longer have any kind of direct relationship to how much sex you are having.

There may well be ongoing generational changes to reproductive and marriage/relationship behavior in Japan, as there is elsewhere (c.f. everywhere on Earth), but this article doesn't go there.

hannibal5• 13 years ago

This is not stupid article. The journalist in question used these few people just to add human interest in a story full of statistics.

1. Increasing number of Japanese have just casual sex.

2. Increasing number of Japanese don't have sex (with other human) at all.

There is statistical data from several surveys backing this up.

greghinch• 13 years ago

I think what the parent is saying (and is reiterated by several other posts here) is that premise of young Japanese people not having sex is based on a lack of understanding in the cultural subtexts implied by the way those young people are answering the questions. The reporter is taking their answers at face value, when in fact they shouldn't be at all.

michaelochurch2• 13 years ago

This is a stupid article, and young people in Japan have not stopped having sex.

It doesn't claim that. It says that 25% of young men and 45% of young women are repulsed by sexual contact. That means that 75% of men and 55% of women are still open to it (and, presumably, having it).

I'd bet that if you looked at an American college campus, you'd find similar behavioral statistics, due to the declining ability of young Americans to form intimate relationships (which may not be their fault). Casual sex doesn't fit most people. Many people (including most men) can't get it and many (including most women) don't want it. Only about 50-60% participate in the casual market even once, and half of those end up wishing they hadn't.

Still, a 35% sexlessness rate among people in their 20s means that something is wrong. It doesn't mean that people have stopped having sex (65% are) but it's still a sign of something unhealthy. I don't take those numbers (which are probably not very different from those in the West) to indicate voluntary disinterest, but artifacts of undue stress.

When the cause of the sexlessness (which is not just a Japanese problem) is unnecessary corporate stress, it's worth looking for solutions.

dsj129• 13 years ago

I would argue that it's not so much that most women "don't want" casual sex, but that they are judged more harshly for having it. I believe women's sex drives are quite a bit higher than is reported, mainly because women are ashamed to admit their strictly sexual desires.

Sukotto• 13 years ago

  Casual sex doesn't fit most people. Many people (including
  most men) can't get it and many (including most women) don't
  want it. Only about 50-60% participate in the casual market
  even once, and half of those end up wishing they hadn't.

I'd like to read about that in more depth. Can you cite that gender breakdown and participation/satisfaction stat to a specific set of published research?

kstenerud• 13 years ago

Your two fictional quotes are vague enough for subtext to creep in, but the quotes in the article are quite plain and clear. Speaking to reporters (especially foreign ones) is one of the few cases where Japanese people feel free to speak frankly, because there is a significantly reduced feeling of social judgment. They generally won't talk within their social circle about causal sex because it will lead to talk (or more likely implication) of marriage, which is an uncomfortable subject nowadays, for reasons outlined in the article.

mrcactu5• 13 years ago

are we just being "gaijin" by taking the article at face value.

japanese are particularly good at keeping different segments of their identity separate.

rurabe• 13 years ago

The title is linkbait, to be sure, but I think that in focusing on the hyperbolic linkbaiting, you miss the ultimate point of the article, which to me is to describe a growing cultural shift in relationships, which is having major social and economic repercussions.

dclowd99013• 13 years ago

And speaking with the sex therapist, who also acknowledges the shift in young peoples' cultural approach to sex? Should we disregard that as well?

Also, while the title is certainly link-baity, I think the point of the article is more about the lack of desire to cultivate meaningful intimate relationships that turn into families.

ceautery2• 13 years ago

I loved the picture of the couple leaning away from each other; I think I was supposed to see that as an indicator of the purported epidemic.

I think what the article was, however, was an advertisement for the former dominatrix. Apparently you can pay her to talk to you about women, pay her more to get naked while she talks about women, and maybe if you play your cards right...

jpatokal2• 13 years ago

Generously assuming your comment is merely clueless instead of intentionally offensive, that sort of subtlety would hardly be necessary, as finding commercial sex in Tokyo is trivial. Most larger train station have red-light districts in the immediate vicinity, with (Japanese-only) signage making it extremely clear what's available.

ceautery2• 13 years ago

I have no interest in what's available in Tokyo, only in how Abigail got that mess of an article taken seriously.

You have bold claims regarding my understanding and intent to offend. Elaborate.

unsignedint• 13 years ago

Few things I'm reading from Japanese people (albeit, I won't say this is unbiased observation) often cite unrealistic expectations of their partner's income, look, and personality.

So, I've looked into the government research about it, at least for income part as it is being tangible. [1]

As for income, there have been some research that lifetime unmarried rate would collaborate with income. (Mostly for male) [2]

Their research further says that "In 2010, for male percentage of marriage for permanent employee is 27.7% while same for temp workers are 6.7%, resulting in about 20% of difference, while for female it is 28.2% for permanent workers, and 25.8% for temp workers, shows the much less difference. Therefore the increased rate of male temp workers is contributing to unmarriage rate or marriage at an older age. [3]

[1] http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/index.htm....

[2] http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/image/n10...

[3] http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/html/n122...

Crake3• 13 years ago

I think I remember a study a while back that found that women expect their future husband(s) to make more than them, even though women make equal to men or more in my country. Naturally, this makes "good men" (according to this rather sexist definition of suitability) hard if not impossible to find.

Women have been liberated from a lot of their gender roles, but seem fine with keeping men in theirs.

squirejons2• 13 years ago

ever notice how the corporate media is always trying get more people into the developed nations? Mass immigration! More people! More People! More Babies! MOAR! MOAR!

This baby dearth, combined with the ability of the japanese to keep their elites from increasing mass immigration, means less supply of labor, which means higher wage (remember supply and demand? It applies to labor, too). That means that the corporations that support the corporate media via advertising buys will pay more for labor. The media hates that!

Also, fewer people means fewer consumers for the products advertised in the media. The media hates that!

The media is the enemy of the majority working class citizen of the developed nations.

randomdata• 13 years ago

I cannot speak for all developed nations, but I always got the impression that the corporate media in America was very anti-children. Many shows highlight the trials and tribulations of having children. I cannot think of any popular program that focuses on the joys of having children.

pcurve2• 13 years ago

Japan hasn't quite embraced foreign immigration the way many of its European counterparts have. It's an interesting demographic and economics experiments whose results we shall find out in coming 30-50 years.

I'm willing to bet a lot of money that the low-birth rate trend will reverse at some point. A country with 1.2 birth rate will cease to exist in 200 years, and I just don't see that happening.

More interesting questions to ask is:

1. What will trigger the trend reversal, and make young people reproduce more? (My guess is, vast reduction in standard of living and GDP)

2. And how long will it take for Japan to recover from the damage sustained?

In a long run, I think Japan can pull it off. It will be in better shape than Europe 50 years from now.

guard-of-terra4• 13 years ago

This doesn't work for Japan so well right now: lost generation, 10s of percents of temp jobs with bad pay...

kzrdude2• 13 years ago

Did you notice that the current system is built upon growth? Growth in everything, in populations, users, consumers, prices, resource extraction etc etc

alinajaf2• 13 years ago

Very interesting article, multiple points to make:

If living and being in Japan has taught me anything, it's that generalising from anecdote is not a good idea.

Case in point, if you visit an outlet mall a few miles outside of central Sendai on a weekend, you'd have a lot of trouble convincing anyone that Japanese people aren't making enough babies. It was very, very difficult to spot single people, or even couples without babies crawling all over them on our one day out there.

In a population of nearly 130 million, if there's any generalisation you want to make about Japanese people, you'll find enough anecdotes to put together into a convincing article.

On the usage of mendokusai, I think the author of the article may have misunderstood in the situation he's describing. I believe that in this situation mendokusai meant "It's tiresome to be constantly propositioned by male colleagues at work" rather than "I would have sex with everyone, but I can't be bothered". IME you use mendokusai whenever you're tired of something, along with describing a task that is tiresome.

pcurve2• 13 years ago

I agree generalizing is not a good idea, but a single person wouldn't necessarily hang out at an outlet mall by himself either. (or spend a lot of time outside for that matter)

rhytha• 13 years ago

afaik, mendokusai = messy. But Japanese language is context base, so you can use same words for multiple situations.

alinajaf2• 13 years ago

From jisho.org[1]: 面倒くさい - bother(some) to do; tiresome

Also the word 面倒 translates to trouble, difficulty; care; attention;, so that with +くさい would make it troublesome.

I've not heard it being used for messy, unless perhaps you mean messy as in a messy situation (rather than say, a messy room).

[1] http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E9%9D%A2%E5%80%92%E3%81%8F%E3%81...

nkhodyunya3• 13 years ago

Sex nowadays became a redundant, obsolete, risky, overcomplicated act which you can totally avoid with the help of good porn. So why bother with searching partner, if you can have all of sex benefits alone, but with porn or good imagination.

gradsolos• 13 years ago

This.

With the amazing variety and quantity of high-quality porn nowadays, it never ceases to amaze me the great efforts people are willing to undergo for the possibility of sex.

When I ask, most people admit they don't really like that place or feel like doing that, they do it only to increase their prospects of having casual sex. C'mon, it's the 21st century!

philwelch8• 13 years ago

Are you a solipsist or just a virgin?

nkhodyunya3• 13 years ago

Neither. I've tried casual sex when I was young, 5 or 7 times before realized it's totally overrated overhyped trash.

graycat5• 13 years ago

Sex? Add in commitment, caring, affection, intimacy, romance, joining of lives, a good version of passion, a collection of memories, activities, traditions really like, don't want to lose, can't get anywhere else, and, thus, cause 'lock in', vows, supportive families, children ("most rewarding thing we did"), etc. One night stands are not very good on passion; it takes a while for a caring, loving couple to be good with each other with passion. One night stands are at best just mutual friction, and a simple electrical appliance can replace that.

She has two legs. He has two legs. If she breaks a leg, then she is down to one leg to help her broken leg get well. But joined with him with good vows, commitment, etc. they have four legs with three good legs to help her broken leg get well. Can rattle off 10,000 such cases faster than can say them.

People don't want to be alone. Being alone is scary. Nearly all baby mammals know this. Being joined to someone is much more secure.

nkhodyunya3• 13 years ago

This probably must sound reasonable, at least for a guy who was taught this things during his whole life. But as for me, any relationships I can imagine with a human being is a painful nightmare. I don't really know if I enjoy loneliness or not, but at least I don't find it painful at all.

chiaro2• 13 years ago

Ha, let's just wait until the Oculus Rift hits mainstream.

return0• 13 years ago

Perhaps you are a japanese?

Anyway, how is sex risky and overcomplicated (unless sharp objects, diseases and coordinated acrobatics are involved)? Sex should be simple fun. Maybe you refer to dating or the search for a partner.

If today's gay hookup apps are any indicator, straight hookups will become instant gratification at the tap of a button, soon. We 're not there yet because of cultural hangups.

seanmcdirmid• 13 years ago

WhatsApp, WeChat are already there I think.

jimgardener• 13 years ago

Not all people in India have premarital sex.In cities it may be different.But in rural areas very few does.This is not something people discuss with a journalist.I know many young men belonging to Christian communities who consider sex outside of marriage as a bad thing.

sexjpfr• 13 years ago

For those of you that know french.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PRPnG_se_o&hd=1

tokenadult• 13 years ago

This article would be a lot more informative if it looked at some other countries for comparison and contrast. Other countries that have been in the news for a high age of first marriage and a very low birthrate are Italy and Taiwan. What is similar about those countries, and what is different about them, alongside Japan? I have read that Taiwan (where I have lived during two different three-year periods of foreign residence and work) has the highest age of first marriage, and one of the lowest birthrates, of any country in the world. But Taiwan's culture is distinct from that of Japan, and some of the relevant workplace conditions and government policies are a bit different too. So what is the causation here?

JoeAltmaier3• 13 years ago

The internet? Infinite sexual gratification is a new phenomenon. Does it correlate with this societal statistic?

speeder7• 13 years ago

This also happened to late roman empire, just before their collapse.

I know you like links, but I am busy now and cannot re-find them...

But basically, any country that is prosperous enough to women work in equal terms to men in a safe environment (ie: police exists and army is strong), ends having women rights movements, a acceptance of homosexuals, and a sharp rise in individualism.

Then a mix of this happen (usually all of it, and it DID happened in Rome):

no-fault divorce (prompting huge amount of women-initiated divorces, and then men stopping marriages) babysitters and daycare (because women are not home to take care of children) great numbers of women that prefer their careers over marriage great numbers of men men that prefer goofing around instead of having responsability over a household.

All this usually results in decline of births, and debt problems as countries start to debase their currency in a attempt to keep the same standard of living for the old while there is not enough young people (this is much worse in countries with military all over the globe, like Rome)

Then you start having governments defaulting on obligations to pay police and army, undoing the conditions that allowed the equality, then your country either drift back to a previous condition, or if it was big enough and streched far enough, it collapses (like Rome did, as your defaulted police and army, immigrants covering for lack of native young people, and lack of native young people to defend their native land, makes your country a sitting duck for anyone that want to bring it down)

nhangen• 13 years ago

Who needs it when, for an extra fee, your 'therapist' will get naked and give you a tour of the female body.

Talk about blurred lines.

n1ghtm4n2• 13 years ago

Why has no one brought up overcrowding in Japan? You don't think that's going to affect the birth rate?

http://inventorspot.com/articles/six_startling_scenes_overcr...

kalleboo4• 13 years ago

Meanwhile the Japanese countryside is depopulating at an amazing rate, leaving ghost towns in their wake, with elementary schools built for 700 students housing 2.

n1ghtm4n2• 13 years ago

That's not necessarily a bad thing! People move to cities to find a better life, and they usually find it. That's great unless you think a life of rural poverty is some kind of noble virtue.

The global population is 7.1 billion and rising fast. We should all cheer when we hear these statistics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization#Environmental_eff...

njharman• 13 years ago

"I can't be bothered."

Sums up my feelings pretty much exactly. I lack much, if any parental instincts. I also lack any family or peer pressure to marry and make babies. Without the push to produce offspring relationships have more downsides than up. Children 10 times as so.

I enjoy relationships (well most of them). But, there is so much to do and experience in the world. I'll never get to all before I die. There's no reason to spend my time in sub-optimal pursuits.

philwelch8• 13 years ago

I can't help but read these stories and think, "well I guess that's what a dying culture looks like".

graycat5• 13 years ago

Okay, take a town 60 years ago. Lots of people, say,

o driving cars with tires that last only 15,000 miles,

o driving cars with engines that last only 80,000 miles (due to poor lubrication due to water and gasoline in the oil due to inaccurate fuel mixture and ignition),

o typing on typewriters with carbon paper,

o doing business communications with printing and/or typing on paper sent by USPS,

o an office telephone switchboard manned by employees.

Now enter new technology, and each of these activities uses some automation, is much cheaper, and puts the old employees out of work.

So, have lots of unemployed people with little or no money who want to make money and consume but cannot get jobs.

Why not jobs? For one, the total number of jobs shrank, and as in musical chairs some people don't get one.

For another, to create more jobs need some ideas for new products/services, some capital to get the businesses going, and some qualified employees. The unemployed people will need some new training, that is, investments in 'human capital'.

As we know from depressions, can have a shortage of capital, lots of people not consuming who want to work but no jobs for them to do. Then if have a war, suddenly can have three jobs for everyone who can work at all.

There is also an effect of the ratios of people to land and other natural resources. With high density population, the prices of such resources increase. Maybe when the population of Japan, Finland, France, Germany, Russia, the US, etc. shrink, the new ratio will make it easier for a couple to form a family. E.g., if the population is low enough that a young couple can easily buy 200 acres of good farm land, then there will be some new alternatives for that couple to form a family. Now at maybe $5000 an acre, let's, see, 200 acres would be $1 million. She's 18; he's 22; and where are they going to get $1 million or even a down payment plus farm equipment and materials for a house?

Presumably in time startups will find new products and services that people want and that can make use of the unemployed.

But, in that town when automation put the typists out of work, the jobs of some people were not affected and, first cut, by having the company spend much less on typing, could pay their remaining employees more. So, some people are doing well.

And in Japan, the article seems to suggest that real estate prices are so high that no one can afford them! No! Instead, real estate prices are so high just because enough people actually can afford them. So, some people are doing well, and maybe they, or their lucky heirs, are forming traditional families.

graycat5• 13 years ago

The Japanese in the article are missing out on what man/woman love can really mean and the value it can have.

So there should be not just 'friction' but 'love' (with the help that Mother Nature provides) with commitment, caring, affection, intimacy, passion, joining of lives, vows, romance, trust (he doesn't return from a business trip and discover that she's drained the checkbook and savings account, took the best of the household belongings and the dog, and is gone), respect, responsiveness (they respond to each other), supportive families (e.g., he gets a job in her father's business), collection of activities, memories, and traditions like, don't want to lose, can't get anywhere else, and that cause 'lock in', homes ("where the heart is, where you are loved even when you are wrong"), and children ("the most rewarding thing we did").

Joining? For a few hundred years in Western Civilization, standard marriage vows started off with "We gather together to join this man and this women with the bonds of holy matrimony.", and there is wisdom there.

Or, for a more direct explanation, she has two legs. He has two legs. If she breaks a leg, then she is down to one leg to help her broken leg get well. But joined with him with good vows, commitment, etc. they have four legs with three good legs to help her broken leg get well. The three legs are three times better than just the one. Can rattle off 10,000 such cases faster than can say them.

People don't want to be alone. Being alone is scary. Nearly all baby mammals know this. Being joined to someone is much more secure.

This can be great stuff, some of the best in life, even without children, and one night stands are nothing like the same. The article omitted nearly all the really good stuff.

analog31• 13 years ago

There's an analogous effect that's reportedly been around for a long time, possibly worldwide: An anti-correlation between birth rates and things like the education and economic empowerment of women. In addition, even the US has seen a decline in birth rates resulting from economic stagnation. Is Japan an exception, or merely an extreme case due to the tenacity of workplace sex discrimination?

UUMMUU• 13 years ago

I like it how they're trying to "fix" the population decline. A population decline might actually be a good thing for our species. There are too many people and an ever increasing sense of stupidity

victorhooi• 13 years ago

Well, yes, until you actually think it through, and realise that this also means your population is aging...

Basically, you have a bunch of old people around, and nobody to support them, or fuel the society.

And after a certain point, you can't reverse it, and you no longer have a viable society.

alkonaut• 13 years ago

The problem isn't so much the sex is it? The problem is of course demographic. Related, but not the same. Amazingly the government of Japan surely understands the problem at hand, and still refuses to act. Labour laws of course cannot allow an employer to fire someone (or choose not to hire) based on pregnancy (or being a woman of that age). There is only one sure way of making women as desirable to hire in this respect: ensure men stay at home with children just as much as women. State subsidized childcare and a year or two of paid maternal/paternal leave per child would be a net win for Japan (as it is for most such countries).

nctorn• 13 years ago

I see this trend in other industrialized countries, like in western Europe. I believe probably a very important cause of this demographic imbalance is the equality factor. Women work same as men, earn same as men and feel empowered. This is great for the individual, but then the society as a whole remains out of equilibrium.

For some reason being independent (able to buy what I want, when I want it and work 20 hours a day) is better than rising a family and having children. Things that are after all, the reason of what as species, are suppose to be doing in this planet.

The signal is then clear, you fail to do that, but being to extinct. This is exactly what begins where this trends are prevalent. Perhaps we need to rethink the roles and if being independent is something that in the long term will create more value for the group.

Futurebot• 13 years ago

When we talk about the medium or long term, we should also start to consider the impact of life-extension, and more importantly, youth preservation technologies; the entire issue of "young supporting the old" disppears if people stop aging. There is virtually no government support for research to support this, even though we should consider it one of the most important issues in history (and many diseases simply a subset of the "disease" of aging.) Perhaps trends like the ones discussed in the article will get governments thinking about it (and having Google investing in this area is a nice boost.)

21echoes• 13 years ago

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/10/23/are_japanes...

Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

Related Stories