14 DAY TRIAL // They may watch hentai and go every year to the Kanamara (Penis Festival) to kiss the holly phalluses, but no sex means no children. 25 % of the married Japanese couples had no sex in 2007, as revealed by a survey made by Nihon University's Population Research Institute and World Health Organization. This is a worrying issue in a country where natality has plummeted.
Sex is especially a neglected aspect as people grow older, since 37.3 % of Japanese married couples in their 50s did not have sex life. 7.2% of the couples aged 20 did not have sex. In the case of the married couples or of those that had been living together for less than five years and were in their 20's, 42.2 % were found to have had sex once a week or more often.
"There may be a need to look into the fundamental aspect of reproduction - the frequency of having sex - as a new problem in a nation with a low birth rate," was the opinion of the institute.
Japan combines one of the world's lowest birth rates (1.26) (this represents the number of children a woman has during her lifespan) with one of the world's lowest immigration rate, a combination that announces a severe future demographic crisis for the world's second-largest economy. The demographic changes have already risen a number of social issues, particularly a potential decline in the tax paying workforce population, labor shortages and increases in the cost of social security benefits such as the public pension plan.
The government is attempting to make the Japanese society more focused on family, including laws to enable a better legal protection to professional mothers and decrease Japan's notorious long working hours.
But "Japan's low birth rate cannot be explained just by socioeconomic factors. The study found no correlation between sex drive and stress. Experts from the WHO, the institute and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population will hold a conference in Tokyo in November to discuss the matter," said Naohiro Ogawa, head of the institute.
Current Japanese population is of 127,463,000 inhabitants, but it could dwindle down to 100 million by 2050, and to half by 2100, if the current tendency continues. Another issue is the aging of the population, aggravated by one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world, of 81.25 years. Already 20 % of the population is over 65.
Many studies consider the stress of busy working lives, repression, cultural norms stretched and challenged by a generation rebelling against the restrictions of media and expression and sexuality, to be the main cause of the drop in fertility. It seems that the Japanese women, empowered by the financial situation, no longer find fun and obligation in transforming themselves in obeying children factories. Apparently, the Japanese are also losing their communication skills due to the intensive use of the Internet.
The 2007-2008 Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey, made on a pool of 26,000 people from 26 countries around the world, put the Japanese at the end of the list, with only 34 % having sex at least once a week. Japanese women also bottomed the list of quality sex: only 10% of them regularly have orgasms.
In a 2006 research made at University of Chicago, Japan came last in a 29-country study on sexual satisfaction, with just 25.7 % of the couples declaring to be satisfied. It was also the last in a 41 nations 2005 research made by condom manufacturer Durex, with people having, on average, just 45 sexual contacts yearly, as compared to a global average of 103.