It is widely perceived that adultery is common in Japan, but what's the reality? Sure, there are lots of dating apps out there, including ones specifically for people already with partners. There's also a bustling cottage industry of private detectives whose entire raison d'ĂȘtre is to find out whether your spouse is cheating or not. It also depends on the definition of adultery and cheating. Prostitution is a large industry in Japan but would a session every now and then with a sex worker count as an affair or cheating? Well, a survey by the aptly named Love Is All of 1,966 married men ...

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Who are the top female idols from the 1980s? Japanese people in their fifties were recently asked to rank who they think are the biggest female idols who debuted between 1986 and 1989. The online survey came up with Chisato Moritaka as number 1. The 54-year-old is still going strong, releasing music, giving concerts, and appearing regularly on TV. At number two was 50-year-old Rie Miyazawa, who made her debut in a TV commercial for Mitsui House in 1987. As regular readers will know, she went on to make a seminal contribution to the hair nude genre of photography. At number three was ...

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Another month, another damning survey that says Japanese couples are sexless. The latest, conducted with 4,000 married people, concludes that two in three marriages in Japan are sexless. The survey asked people in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties (500 men and women from each age group). The results show that 68.2% engage in little or no sexual intercourse: 43.9% of respondents said they had fully "sexless" marriages, while 24.3% were "nearly sexless." Of course, like with all surveys, there are issues here, not least how they define "sexless" (zero sexual contact, ...

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A new survey has found that a third of unmarried Japanese adults in their twenties, thirties, and forties have never been in a relationship. As reported by Kyodo News: At 34.1 percent, the ratio of single men and women who have never had a romantic relationship was at a record high since Recruit Holdings Co., a staffing service group, began conducting surveys on people's views on marriage in 2017. The figure of 25.6 percent for people not seeking marriage nearly matches the finding in last year's gender equality survey by the Japanese government, which has been struggling to deal with the ...

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A survey has found that 46% of unmarried Japanese men in their twenties have never dated a member of the opposite sex. The figure is a record high, representing a significant increase from 34.2% in the last survey two years ago. The survey by Recruit Bridal Research Institute found a slight drop in the numbers of men in their forties who have never dated (down from 27.1% to 22.9%), but a rise in the numbers of men in their thirties (up from 35.4% to 41.2%). Just 26.7% of men in their twenties said they currently had a partner. On average, 43.5% of men said they wanted to get married in ...

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The media narratives about Japan typically conform to a handful of familiar tropes: Japan is a sexless, childless hellscape, or Japan is a kinky, weird land of bountiful sexual fetishes. Of course, neither is true. Japan is just Japan, with all shades and colors. But it is a fact that the population is declining and people are having fewer children. The number of babies born in Japan dropped below 800,000 last year, the first time this has happened since records began in 1899. The reasons for this are manifold -- and we think they are primarily economic -- don't rush to assume it's because ...

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Somewhat strangely and belatedly, this has become a controversial topic this month. The popular porn star Eimi Fukada had to backtrack with an apology after she attracted opprobrium for asserting that men should pay for women on dates, since the latter investing a lot of time and money into preparing for the date. And then former AKB48 idol Mai Oshima weighed in, saying during a livestream on her YouTube channel that she wouldn't go to a party or dinner where the guys weren't paying. Japanese dating app Omiai conducted a poll in August 2022 of 217 men and 247 women -- all of whom have a ...

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A new survey has found that an increasing number of people in Japan aged 18-34 don't expect to get married. The results of the government-affiliated National Institute of Population and Social Security's 2021 survey of 7,862 people, published earlier this month, show that 17.3% of men and 14.6% of women aged between 18 and 34 claimed to have no intention of marrying. This is the highest such figure since the questionnaire was first conducted in 1982. Back in the mid-1980s, at the peak of the confident bubble economy years, the numbers were just 2.3% for men and 4.1% for women. The ...

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The latest survey about sex and romance in Japan to grab the headlines claims that 40% of single men in their twenties have never been on a date. The results of the government survey also suggest that this problem isn't just men either. About 25% of young single women too also said they had never had a date with another person. The numbers get a bit complicated, because 5% of married men and women in their twenties also said they had never been on a date, though this may mean they met their partner through a spouse introduction service and don't count their pre-marital meetings as "dates." ...

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We already know that young people and sexuality claims that they are becoming less interested in sex. A new book, though, attempts to get behind the sensational headlines and probe the real reasons and implications of this. Drawing on data from the six-yearly surveys conducted by the Japanese Association for Sex Education since 1974 -- in particular, the most recent survey in 2017 -- the book notes that sexual experience among high schoolers and college students was active until 2005, when it peaked for both male and females with 26.2% male high school students having sexual experience, ...

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