One in four Japanese men in their thirties are virgins, attend sketching classes to get women
June 9, 2015
/ Tadashi Anahori
One in four Japanese men in their thirties have never had sex, claims UK newspaper The Independent, drawing from an AFP article doing the rounds.
In what is now an all-too familiar trope for Japan veterans, the foreign media has wheeled out the tired anti-Japanese male propaganda for another punishment session.
Last week it was Japanese dog-groomers shaving their dogs into square shapes (actually, not real dogs at all). This week it's Japanese guys can't have sex.
41-year-old Takashi Sakai is just one of many middle-aged Japanese men who have still not have sex. He has never ...
Kiss Day: Japanese couples celebrate by kissing though plastic panels
May 21, 2015
/ Tadashi Anahori
Joining the recent silliness of Condom Day in the (ever-increasing) list of odd anniversaries in Japan, "Kiss Day" is celebrated on May 23rd because it is the day that the film Hatachi no seishun (20-Year-Old Youth) was released in 1946.
In case you're not a film buff, that's the movie that featured the first ever kiss scene, though the stars may have had gauze between them.
To celebrate, Edition Aoyama, a club in Akasaka, Tokyo, is holding an event on Saturday where couples (not necessarily male-female, it seems) are invited to kiss each other through an acrylic plastic ...
Sexless Japan? Half of Japanese married couples not having sex
February 10, 2015
/ Tadashi Anahori
It seems rarely a week goes by without another survey appearing in the media with worrying stats confirming that Japan is "sexless".
Sekkusu-banare, the media dubs it -- literally "drifting away from sex".
Well, a survey carried by the Japan Family Planning Association has some shocking results: around half of Japanese married couples are "sexless."
Apparently we shouldn't be worried about the "herbivore men" (soushoku danshi) so much as the "fasting men" (zesshoku danshi).
The survey, the seventh by the Association since 2002, was carried out last September with 3,000 men and women ...
Another day, another media article about sexlessness in Japan.
This time it was an article by Jiji that got republished on The Japan Times.
It focuses on a survey from last September by the Japan Family Planning Association about married couples.
It found that 49.3% of people said they had had no sex in the past month.
"There was a disparity in the sexes," the article claims, though in fact the numbers are almost the same: 48.3% for men were sexless, 50.1% of women. So around half of people don't have sex! Of course, it's natural that married couples have sex less frequently ...
Ignition, a newish English-language online magazine about Japan, has published an article on "Japan: The Sexless Nation".
The article is actually a translation of a piece that appeared in a Japanese newspaper, by Kaku Sechiyama, a professor at University of Tokyo.
It is provocative, to say the least:
Japan has the lowest sexual frequency in the world, and it is the only country where the percentage of people who are not happy with their sex life is higher than that of those who are.
In 2005, out of people in 41 countries, Japan ranked lowest -- with an average of sex just 45 ...
Sexless marriages among middle-aged in Japan now the norm, leads to big jump in adultery
October 21, 2014
/ Tadashi Anahori
The Japan Society of Sexual Science has completed a large survey of sexual habits among middle-aged and elderly couples, investigating Japan's chronic issue of "sexlessness".
Surveying sexual activity among 1,162 middle-aged and older men and women, the results show intriguing trends for the reality of Japanese relationships.
The survey was conducted between January 2011 and December 2012, with men and women living in the Kanto region (which includes Tokyo, Yokohama, Saitama, Chiba etc.) aged between 40 and 79. The average age of male respondents was 59.5 and for women it was ...
Durex says “Japanese people are really unhappy with their sex lives”
May 12, 2014
/ Tadashi Anahori
Durex, the condom brand, have an interest in things sexual.
This doesn't just mean marketing their prophylactic, it also means studying global sex habits.
From Durex's Sexual Wellbeing Survey (2007/2008) and Face of Global Sex (2012), they gained some insights into international bedroom tendencies among heterosexual couples.
The Japan results intrigued us...
The main conclusion is that apparently people in Japan are very unhappy with their sex lives.
Japan was the only country where more people said they were dissatisfied with their sex lives than satisfied.
See the chart ...
BBC on “The Japanese men who prefer virtual girlfriends to sex”
October 25, 2013
/ Tadashi Anahori
It must be the season. Just as Tokyo is getting pounded by typhoons on a weekly basis, so is the foreign media taking an interest in reporting about "nerdy" Japan.
First we had the respected newspaper the Guardian cherry-pick some statistics to produce the dubious conclusion that young people aren't having sex anymore.
Now the BBC has an article about "the Japanese men who prefer virtual girlfriends to sex". Well, my first response was -- you've just found out about this now?!
Secondly, of course, it tars us Japanese guys with the same brush as the otaku. Much as we love otaku ...
45% of Japanese women “not interested in or despise sexual contact”
October 20, 2013
/ Tadashi Anahori
A long article in the Guardian has been published that purports to be sociological and serious, but is actually perpetuating the usual myths we read about our great country -- everyone is unhappy, everyone only works, no one has sex.
The sexes, especially in Japan's giant cities, are "spiralling away from each other". Lacking long-term shared goals, many are turning to what [a sex therapist] terms "Pot Noodle love" -- easy or instant gratification, in the form of casual sex, short-term trysts and the usual technological suspects: online porn, virtual-reality "girlfriends", anime cartoons. ...
40% of Japanese men are virgins: Condom maker reveals Japan’s sex habits
July 1, 2013
/ Tadashi Anahori
We've looked at surveys before -- from men who never date to the best breasts, habits and the most-viewed Wikipedia pages.
Now Sagami, one of Japan's leading condom makers, has released the results of a big nationwide survey, Nippon no Sex, it did in January this year.
It surveyed 14,100 men and women online (plus 29,315 in a pre-survey), aged from their twenties to their sixties, and from all of Japan's forty-seven prefectures.
The results are a little alarming in places, such as that 40.6% of Japanese males are still virgins (as opposed to just 25.5% of women), and that the average ...