Sexless Japan? Half of Japanese married couples not having sex
It seems rarely a week goes by without another survey appearing in the media with worrying stats confirming that Japan is “sexless“.
Sekkusu-banare, the media dubs it — literally “drifting away from sex”.
Well, a survey carried by the Japan Family Planning Association has some shocking results: around half of Japanese married couples are “sexless.”
Apparently we shouldn’t be worried about the “herbivore men” (soushoku danshi) so much as the “fasting men” (zesshoku danshi).
The survey, the seventh by the Association since 2002, was carried out last September with 3,000 men and women aged 16-49 all over the country. 1,134 answers were valid. Okay, can we use just over 1,000 people to explain a country of over 120 million? We can try.
18.3% of men answered that they had “no interest at all” in sex or “hated” it. This was the highest of all past surveys and disinterest was surprisingly low among younger men; only 34% of men aged 16-19 said they had an interest in sex.
The Association thinks that the lack of interest in sex stems from the sense that getting a partner is a pain. It requires time, patience and money, which are in short supply in recession-era Japan, when people work long hours for little pay.
Economics can also partly be blamed for the lack of sex married couples enjoy.
44.6% of married couples said they had not had sex for over a month (which apparently qualifies as a sexless partnership). However, there was a discrepancy here: only 36.2% of men said this to 50.3% of women. The men may be going somewhere else for their fun.
The biggest reasons from men was that they were too tired from work, while the ladies said that having sex was a “bother.”
The abortion rate was 13%, a small decline on 2002’s result.
As for contraception, 86% of women are using condoms (to be precise, making their partners wear them). The contraceptive pill accounts for a mere 5%, though it is hard to get in Japan. Emergency contraception like the morning-after pill is available but is hard to get and expensive. Abortion pills are not available.
3 Comments
Yeah, mate. I empathize with the Japanese males. Sex is such a bother, all that running after the sheep and all. They just won’t stay put like a good partner should.
“Japan also does not have the morning-after pill and awareness of it is low.”
This is FALSE. The morning-after pill Norlevo(ノルレボ) has been available in Japan since 2011. It’s two pills that you take within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
@Shiratori Ryushi
Interesting input, thanks. We’ve read that it’s not available in Japan, but perhaps that just means that the easy forms of emergency contraception commonly available in drug stores in Europe or North America are not available. We certainly know of a prescription-only morning-after-type pill that has been around even longer than Norlevo, but it’s hard to get and VERY expensive.