Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

[cronus]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/o ... having-sex

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means "love" in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did "all the usual things" like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan's media calls sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome".

Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" – and it's partly the government's fault.

The sign outside her building says "Clinic". She greets me in yoga pants and fluffy animal slippers, cradling a Pekingese dog whom she introduces as Marilyn Monroe. In her business pamphlet, she offers up the gloriously random confidence that she visited North Korea in the 1990s and squeezed the testicles of a top army general. It doesn't say whether she was invited there specifically for that purpose, but the message to her clients is clear: she doesn't judge.

Inside, she takes me upstairs to her "relaxation room" – a bedroom with no furniture except a double futon. "It will be quiet in here," she says. Aoyama's first task with most of her clients is encouraging them "to stop apologising for their own physical existence".

The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan – a country mostly free of religious morals – sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way.

(continued)

[laklak]

I blame tentacle porn.

[klr]

Looks like the Japanese have stumbled on a solution to the population explosion. Now, all they need to do is export it ...

[Audley Strange]

Perhaps we should fly a couple of them to Edinburgh zoo and see if we can encourage them to mate in captivity. Perhaps they're just finished as a culture.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Perhaps they should stop jizzling out the naughty bits in their pr0n so the kidz can see what is going on!

[cronus]

Too many close relatives.

[Jason]

Japan: Perverted old men buying used panties and young people who despise the very idea of sex. Connection? Nah.

[cronus]

Japan: Perverted old men buying used panties and young people who despise the very idea of sex. Connection? Nah.

False positive - that's true everywhere.

[JimC]

Send catholic priests there for celibacy training...

[Svartalf]

Send young Japanese ladies to me for love of life training.

[JimC]

Send young Japanese ladies to me for love of life training.

What's a few more young female suicides in Japan?

[Svartalf]

If they are going to die anyway, let them serve a higher purpose before they do themselves in.

[Clinton Huxley]

Good, it's a damned nasty business anyway.

[Svartalf]

You don't know what's good in life (beside crushing your enemie's, seeing them scattered before you and listening to the wailing of their women, of course)

[Clinton Huxley]

You don't know what's good in life (beside crushing your enemie's, seeing them scattered before you and listening to the wailing of their women, of course)

Crushing one's enemies is exhausting and I hear enough wailing from the MHs.