31 percent of Japanese women admit to cheating on partner

We know that adultery is quite common in Japan, especially among men — and that’s probably before you even start thinking about the various sex services out there for the guys to try if things get stale.

But women are not holding back anymore. The rapid growth of services like Ashley Madison and the popularity of TV dramas like Hirugao with Aya Ueto suggest that women are also keen to dip their toe into the big ocean of extramarital affairs. Several high-profile cases have exposed this. For every Ken Watanabe there’s a Yuki Saito and Aoi Miyazaki. Even Becky, though not married herself, was largely portrayed as the “guilty” party after her high-profile affair with a married musician was exposed, resulting in a tearful press conference and temporary absence from public life.

A recently announced survey by online manga service Mecha Comic polled people on their experiences of cheating in late January and early February. It got 1,737 responses from female participants. It came up with some interesting results…

Apparently 31% of Japanese women admit to cheating on a lover during a relationship. Six percent even say they were caught!

Before we started deriding Japanese women as sluts, though, the same survey found that 38% of women said their husbands had cheated on them — so it’s a case of boots and other feet, and so on.

The stated reasons for women having affairs seemed quite typical: attraction to the new man (or woman, we suppose); boredom with their current relationship; revenge on their cheating partner, and so on.

Of course, the definition of “cheating” and “adultery” can be plastic. For some people, a date, a hug or holding hands, or even a smooch are not enough. Sure, they may not be morally “pure” either but may not constitute out-right cheating. And then some people might not even consider a quick fling — say, a one-night stand with someone — adultery if it ends there and then, as opposed to a protracted affair that you spend time and effort continuing and concealing from your spouse/partner and family.

As such, the breakdown of what the female respondents felt constituted adultery is instructive. The bar is actually pretty low.

Apparently 9% of respondents think that going out to eat just with another person is tantamount to adultery — perhaps because of the expectation of where things will go or because of how it seems to those around them in public. “Having sex” got 29% of responses, followed closely by “kissing” at 27%. But then “hugging” also received 14% of responses and even “holding hands” got 19%. This might seem strange but then men and women in Japan who are not lovers do not rarely hug or hold hands, so the logic presumably is that if you’re hugging and touching hands, then you’re on the slippery slope to a tumble in the hay.