Oh no. One of those surveys has appeared. Despite our best efforts to celebrate the diverse and exciting sexual landscape in Japan, these perennial surveys reporting on sexlessness in the country get lots more attention and tarnish the reputation (probably made worse by our own regurgitation of them on these digital pages). Of course, decline in sexual activities between long-term partners is common across the world and so is a decline in dating and sex among the young, though the reporting on it in Japan tends to veer toward the orientalist. This latest survey is a bit different, because ...

How to deal with depopulation in rural areas? This question has been haunting Japanese regional governments for decades now. Above all, not only do they need to encourage the people who move away to major urban centers for work to return, they really need to target younger people with families. Because above all, these areas need young people. The central government's policy when it comes to urgent matters is typically to launch a PR campaign -- in terms of the climate crisis, it's mostly about promoting the UN SDGs -- or throw money at it. For the issue of depopulation, they have resorted ...