Oh no. One of those surveys has appeared. Despite our best efforts to celebrate the diverse and exciting sexual landscape in Japan, these perennial surveys reporting on sexlessness in the country get lots more attention and tarnish the reputation (probably made worse by our own regurgitation of them on these digital pages). Of course, decline in sexual activities between long-term partners is common across the world and so is a decline in dating and sex among the young, though the reporting on it in Japan tends to veer toward the orientalist. This latest survey is a bit different, because ...

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We already wrote about this story back in September but now the mainstream foreign media is starting to pick up the survey by the Japanese Association for Sex Education, which examines the rate of sex and other forms of intimacy among junior and senior high school students. Perhaps prompted by the publication of the full version of the survey and new reports about it in the Japanese media, liberal bastion the Guardian recently ran an article bemoaning the falling numbers of male Japanese school students who had never kissed. As noted in September, the survey results indicate that only one ...

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A survey has found that the number of high school students who have never kissed someone had increased. The numbers of high schoolers with experience of kissing or sex is now around half of what it was in the early 2000s. The Japanese Association for Sex Education's survey, which it carries out diligently every six years, investigates frequency of physical intimacy among high school students. The data sample was 12,562 students, including 4,321 high schoolers and 3,614 university students. Only 22.8% of male high school students (roughly one in five) said they had kissed someone, which is ...

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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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