As couples around the world prepared to celebrate their love on Valentine’s Day yesterday, Japan was grappling with more evidence that its citizens have lost the spark in the bedroom.
A new survey by the Japanese family planning association found that nearly half of married couples had not had sex for more than a month and did not expect that to change in the short term — the association’s definition of a “sexless” marriage.
The data on married couples were among the findings of a wider survey of 3,000 people aged between 16 and 49 conducted at the end of last year.
The association received responses from more than 1,200 people, including 655 married men and women.
A record high 47.2 percent of married men and women said they were in sexless marriages, up 2.6 percentage points from the previous poll in 2014, the association said, and significantly higher than the 31.9 percent recorded when it conducted its first survey of the nation’s bedroom habits in 2004.
“The tendency of being in a sexless marriage has increased,” Japanese media quoted association president Kunio Kitamura as saying.
Some experts have cast doubt on the notion that Japan has suffered a collective loss of libido and point out that its people are not alone among industrialized nations in struggling to find the time for intimacy.
Tellingly, the highest rate of sexlessness was found among people in their mid to late 40s — a time when the demands of work and family can be at their greatest.
More than 22 percent of all women surveyed said they found sex “troublesome” — up from 21.3 percent in 2014.
Among married men, 35.2 percent said that work left them “too tired” for intercourse, while smaller numbers said they had come to see their wives solely as family members rather than as sexual partners, or that their sex lives had fizzled out after the birth of a child.
“This is the first time more than 30 percent of men answered that they were too tired from work to have sex,” Kitamura said. “Apart from improving working hours, there is also a need to review how people work.”
Pressure to overhaul Japanese employment practices to allow more time for family life has increased in the past few years, yet little concrete action has been taken to cut working hours.
The government is expected to set an upper limit for overtime of about 60 hours a month in an attempt to address long working hours highlighted by the suicide of a 24-year-old employee of the advertising firm Dentsu, who had worked more than 100 hours of overtime a month leading up to her death in late 2015.
A survey conducted last year suggested that Japan is experiencing a rise in the number of virgins.
The Japanese National Institute of Population and Social Security Research’s poll of 5,000 single men and women aged 18 to 34 found that the proportion of virgins had increased significantly over the past decade: among men, 42 percent said they had never had sex; among women, the figure was 44 percent.
However, experts said that the percentage of single male virgins had remained almost unchanged since the early 1990s and that other industrialized nations were experiencing similar trends.
The apparent lack of interest in sex among married couples has been blamed for contributing to Japan’s low birth rate, as the nation grapples with the prospect of long-term population decline and the economic fallout from a dwindling workforce.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
COMMUNITY CONFLICT: Concerns about disease spread from corpses has run up against friends and families’ desire to bury their dead as infection spreads in the area Angry residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) attacked and burned a tent that was part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, the staff there said Saturday. It was the second such attack in the region in a week. No one was hurt in the attack, according to reports but as patients ran out to escape the fire, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections fled the facility and are unaccounted for, a hospital director said. Angry residents arrived at the clinic in the
INSURGENT ACTION: A local independence movement in Balochistan, alleged by Pakistan’s government to be backed by India, claimed responsibility for the strike A suicide bomber detonated an vehicle-borne IED near a railway as a passenger train passed through the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta yesterday, killing at least 23 people and wounding over 70, officials said. The explosion caused two of the train cars to overturn and catch fire, according to footage shared online. The attack happened in an area where security forces are usually stationed, badly damaging several nearby buildings and smashing more than a dozen vehicles parked along the road, according to witnesses and images circulating on social media. Doctors at local hospitals said they had received the wounded, with 20 in critical
RSS