Like many Japanese women, Junko waited until her early 30s to get married. When she and her fiance, an employee of a well-known firm, decided to tie the knot, she set her sights on making a home, putting away some money and starting a family.
Fifteen years later, Junko and her husband are childless. It is not that they cannot have children; it is just that they have never had sex.
The sexless marriage is one of several reasons why experts fear Japan is on the verge of a demographic disaster.
PHOTO: AFP
In 2003 Japan's birthrate hit a record low of 1.29 -- the average number of times a woman gives birth during her lifetime -- one of the lowest rates in the world, according to the government. The population will peak next year at about 128 million, then decline to just over 100 million by 2050.
The 200 women a year who seek help at a clinic in the Tokyo suburbs have not had sex with their husbands in up to 20 years, and some never, according to Kim Myong-gan, who runs the clinic.
"The women who come to see me love their husbands and aren't looking for a divorce," he said.
"The problem is that their husbands lose interest in sex or don't want sex from the start. Many men think of their wives as substitute mothers, not as women with emotional and sexual needs."
Kim's short-term solution is unconventional. After an initial ?20,000 (NT$6,800) counselling session, he produces photographs of 45 men, mostly professionals in their 40s, with whom the women are invited to go on dates and then, in almost all cases, arrange regular assignations in hotel rooms.
Kim dismissed charges that his service was little more than a male prostitution ring. "The men volunteer and pay half the hotel and restaurant bills, so legally there is absolutely nothing wrong with it," he said.
He had rescued hundreds of women from despair, he said, but his "sex volunteers" would do nothing to cure the malaise that afflicts the institution of marriage in Japan.
The number of married couples is in rapid decline. In 2000 almost 70 percent of men and 54 percent of women between 25 and 29 were unmarried. That bodes ill for the birthrate, as conservative Japanese society frowns upon having children outside marriage.
A survey of 600 women found that 26 percent had not had sex with their husbands in the past year.
"We are sort of roommates rather than a married couple," one 31-year-old man, who had not had sex with his wife for two years, told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
The government has introduced several measures to lift the birthrate. Fathers will be encouraged to take more than the 47 percent of annual paid leave they currently use, and their employers will be told to provide more opportunities for them to stay at home with their children.
Local authorities, meanwhile, are devising novel ways to increase fertility. In the town of Yamatsuri women will receive ?1m if they have a third child, and in Ishikawa prefecture families with three children will get discounts at shops and restaurants.
The absence of children in so many homes is having an impact. Fun parks are closing and there are signs that the "exam hell" teenagers go through to secure places at top schools and universities is less of an ordeal because the competition is less fierce.
The divorce rate has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, with more women blaming their sexually inactive, as opposed to sexually errant, husbands for break-ups.
"The men love their companies; they live for work," Kim said. "Men don't even think it is a problem if they don't have sex with their wives. They have pornography and the sex industry to take care of their needs, but their wives have nowhere to go. They just suffer in silence."
Late last month Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro told the Philippine Senate that the nation has sufficient funds to evacuate the nearly 170,000 Filipino residents in Taiwan, 84 percent of whom are migrant workers, in the event of war. Agencies have been exploring evacuation scenarios since early this year, she said. She also observed that since the Philippines has only limited ships, the government is consulting security agencies for alternatives. Filipinos are a distant third in overall migrant worker population. Indonesia has over 248,000 workers, followed by roughly 240,000 Vietnamese. It should be noted that there are another 170,000
Enter the Dragon 13 will bring Taiwan’s first taste of Dirty Boxing Sunday at Taipei Gymnasium, one highlight of a mixed-rules card blending new formats with traditional MMA. The undercard starts at 10:30am, with the main card beginning at 4pm. Tickets are NT$1,200. Dirty Boxing is a US-born ruleset popularized by fighters Mike Perry and Jon Jones as an alternative to boxing. The format has gained traction overseas, with its inaugural championship streamed free to millions on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Taiwan’s version allows punches and elbows with clinch striking, but bans kicks, knees and takedowns. The rules are stricter than the
“Far from being a rock or island … it turns out that the best metaphor to describe the human body is ‘sponge.’ We’re permeable,” write Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie in their book Slow Death By Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things. While the permeability of our cells is key to being alive, it also means we absorb more potentially harmful substances than we realize. Studies have found a number of chemical residues in human breast milk, urine and water systems. Many of them are endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with the body’s natural hormones. “They can mimic, block
Pratas Island, or Dongsha (東沙群島) had lain off the southern coast of China for thousands of years with no one claiming it until 1908, when a Japanese merchant set up a facility there to harvest guano. The Americans, then overlords of the Philippines, disturbed to learn of Japanese expansion so close to their colony, alerted the Manchu (Qing) government. That same year the British government asked the Manchus who owned the island, which prompted the Manchu government to make a claim, according to South China Sea expert Bill Hayton. In 1909 the government of Guangdong finally got around to sending
RSS