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Anorak News | No Sex Please We’re Japanese

No Sex Please We’re Japanese

by | 15th, March 2007

geisha_kyoto.jpg“THE situation is dismal,” says Kunio Kitamura, the director of Japan’s Family Planning Association. According to official statistics, 34.6 per cent of couple’s have not had relations for more than four weeks.

We should not be so coy about these matters. We should tell it like it is. It’s just, well, we haven’t talked about it for so long. It’s hard to find the right time, what with the golf, the work and American Idol reaching its conclusion. It’s hard to know how to bring the subject up. Did you bring a magazine?

Mr Kitamura is more blunt. “My research shows that if you do not have sex for a month, you probably won’t have it for a year.” At least not with your significant other.

And as a million and more teenage boys hear the minister for love speak of love and stare into a bleak future, Mr Kitamura says that something urgent must be done.

The facts do not lie. As the Times reports, a survey of 1,400 Japanese indicates that 39.7 per cent of all couples aged 16 to 49 have not had sex for a month. This is, as the Ministry of Health and Welfare notes, a five per cent increase on last year.

Nervous looks all round. Eyes aimed at shoes. Cheeks flushed red.

And something of an eye opener to how things are done in Japan. A conservative nation might play things down. While a similar survey in the UK would have respondents saying they’re at it all day and all night and when they’re not at it they are plotting to do or thinking about doing it again, the Japanese reserve kicks in.

Perhaps if the question was put to a karaoke bar full of Japanese salary men after a few dozen bottles of sake and a rendition of Hi Ho Silver Lining, the result would point to something different.

Indeed, the Times cites a study by the University of Chicago into sexual satisfaction. Of the 29 countries polled, Japan finished last. There are 127 million Japanese. Top of the poll were the Australians. There are 20 million Australians.

Perhaps it’s a case of needs must. The cast of Australian soap operas does not magic itself. London bar staff need to be produced. And Tokyo has been full for some time.

But the ministry has only so much to go on. And the talk in Japan is of overwork, thin-walled dwellings and a lack of privacy.

But the Times distils so much speculation into one conclusion: “Japanese are giving up on sex.”

Which should leave them with more time for art, science and exploration. The rest of us are doomed…



Posted: 15th, March 2007 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink