Almost half of men in Japan have used sex workers

Discussions are underway regarding a review of the Prostitution Prevention Law, including the possibility of penalties for those who pay for sex services. According to a report in the Asahi Shimbun on March 31, the discussions draw on data from a large-scale survey of 8,000 people revealing that approximately 48% of men living in Japan have used sex industry services at least once in their lives.

The survey was undertaken by a team including researchers from the University of Tokyo. It was conducted online in July 2022, targeting 8,000 people (4,000 men and 4,000 women) aged 20-49. Its main purpose was to understand the realities of sexual health and sexual behaviors in Japan, and the analysis results were published in 2023 in an English-language article in the international academic periodical the Journal of Sex Research.

Regarding the use of sex industry services, 48.3% of men and 4% of women reported having used them at some point in their lives. Personally, we think the headline for the article should be the 4% of women, which is obviously low but still intriguing. We doubt many are even aware that such services for women exist, let alone that 4% of women are using them.

The most frequently used services by men were soaplands (30.6%), fashion/delivery health services (27.1%), and pink salons (19.5%).

In total, 4.0% of women and 48.3% of men reported ever having used commercial sex worker services in their lifetime. These proportions were highest among women aged 20–29 (5.3%) and men aged 40–49 (59.6%). The three most commonly used services among men included soaplands (30.6%) [a type of commercial sex work establishment that offers erotic massages using personal lubricant often paired with penetrative intercourse], call services (27.1%) [split into two types: “fashion health” refers to commercial sex work establishments that typically offer erotic massages and oral sex, but penetrative intercourse may incur an extra charge; “delivery health” refers to a service in which commercial sex workers meet clients at their homes or hotels and offer the same services as “fashion health”], and pink salons (19.5%) [a type of commercial sex work establishment in which clients receive oral sex].

According to one of the survey report of the article, Haruka Sakamoto, currently a visiting associate professor of public health and international health at St. Luke’s International University, a similar survey conducted in Sweden found that approximately 10% of men aged 16-84 and less than 1% of women had ever used the sex industry in their lifetime. Another survey in the UK found that 3-5% of men reported paying for sex in the past five years, indicating that Japan’s utilization rate is high compared to other countries.

Why is use of the sex industry in Japan so high? Professor Sakamoto cites “the ease of access to the sex industry, the existence of diverse services, and the ambiguous legal status,” and points out that “the social stigma associated with using it is lower compared to Western countries.”

Other findings from the survey and highlighted in the 2023 article include:

15.3% of women and 19.8% of men reported never having had any partners with whom they engaged in vaginal, anal, or oral sex. 45.3% of women and 44.5% of men reported not having had any sexual partners during the past year; this proportion was highest among women aged 40–49 years (51.7%) and men aged 20–29 years (55.1%). The proportion of those reporting satisfaction with their sex life was 27.8% for women and 23.1% for men; 17.6% of women and 27.1% of men reported dissatisfaction. Pornography use of ≥3 times per week was most common among those aged 20–29 years (6.5% of women; 34.8% of men), and the frequency of pornography use decreased slightly with age. 4.0% of women and 48.3% of men reported ever having used commercial sex worker services in their lifetime.

While the high proportion of men who have used sex workers is getting the headlines, the survey data reveal a far more complex sexual landscape: one of dissatisfied, sex-deprived partners, virgins, and actually lower porn consumption than might be expected.

Another, more recent article by Sakamoto and her co-authors specifically looks at the issue of sexual inactivity in Japan.

The 2025 article, also published in the Journal of Sex Research, draws on 43 surveys from 1974 to 2024, claiming:

Findings indicated that sexual inexperience had increased during the past decades such that around half of the Japanese population remained sexually inexperienced into their mid-twenties and approximately 10% of the individuals had no sexual experience when reaching their 30s, although most of the data pertained to heterosexual inexperience. The prevalence of sexual inactivity was high and had increased during the past decades.

The co-authors go on to list several hypotheses for the sexual inactivity: a rise in asexuality and low sexual desire; socioeconomic factors; a positive cultural framing of sexual inactivity (such as comedians boasting openly about their lack of interest in sex, and the popularization of terms like sekkusu-banare and soshokukei-danshi); the rise of fictosexuality and pseudoromance (such as people developing feelings of affect toward fictional characters); long working houses (for men) and the burden of household chores and childrearing (for women); and restrictive attitudes toward sex and limited focus on sexual wellbeing (in short, the emergence of less positive social attitudes toward sex due to contact with Buddhism and Christianity, and inadequate sex education that focuses on negative aspects like STDs or simply biological aspects like reproduction and fertility).