According to a recent study commissioned by the Japanese government, the country’s desire for sex is dropping quickly.
The biennial survey, originally designed to gauge the success of the country’s birth-control education, revealed that 36.1 percent of Japanese males between 16 and 19 had no interest in or even loathed sex. In 2008, that number was 17.5 percent.
Of girls in that 16–19 age group, 59 percent had no interest in sex, up 12 points from 2008.
Forty percent of married people admitted to not having sex within the last month.
Overall, the fertility rate in Japan has dropped to 1.37 births per woman. It’s 2.06 in the U.S. Such a low rate, if it continues, could have major consequences for the Japanese economy.
All age categories, other than men 30 to 34, reported a general indifference toward sex, compared to the responses from two years ago.
Why such a drop in sexual desire?
The plight of the young Japanese man with no sexual desire has been covered before. They’re known as “grass-eating boys” or “herbivores.” They’re young men with no real interest in sex, a relationship, a career, or most material things. A convergence of two of the country’s biggest problems: the fledgling birth rate and the drop in consumption.
Alexandra Harney wrote about “The Herbivore’s Dilemma” for Slate in June of 2009:
Grass-eating boys’ commitment phobia is not the only thing that’s worrying Japanese women. Unlike earlier generations of Japanese men, they prefer not to make the first move, they like to split the bill, and they’re not particularly motivated by sex. “I spent the night at one guy’s house, and nothing happened—we just went to sleep!” moaned one incredulous woman on a TV program devoted to herbivores. “It’s like something’s missing with them,” said Yoko Yatsu, a 34-year-old housewife, in an interview. “If they were more normal, they’d be more interested in women. They’d at least want to talk to women.”
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The herbivores have rejected just about every traditional definition of masculinity. The growing role of women in professional Japan, along with fewer guaranteed-salary positions—formerly a staple of Japanese culture—led to the rise of the herbivore, according to Harney.
At the same time, the increased role of women in Japanese society might be hurting the sex drive of those same women. It’s still a widely held belief in Japan that women should quit their jobs once they give birth. So, they’re rejecting sex and marriage in the interest of a prolonged, more successful career.
As I mentioned, once Japanese men and women get married, their sexual desire doesn’t seem to increase either. For the couples that weren’t having frequent sex, reasons cited were a “vague reluctance after childbirth, that they could not be bothered, or that they were too tired after work.”
If no one’s having sex, Japan’s birthrate can’t increase. And it needs to: the country’s population dropped by a record number in 2010.
What do you think of Japan’s countrywide lack of a sex drive? What about the herbivores? How can Japan right the ship? Let us know.
—Photo mecredis/Flickr
If such is the case, then immigrants ought to be welcomed to Japan and marriage between non Japanese and Japanese ought to take place. That can save the decrease of population to some extent.
There is no feminism in Japan so it can’t win. The reason for no sex among married couples is due to overwork. The same is probably true of many youngsters. However there is also a strange asexuality that you find in many Japanese people. For girls its almost like they are too pure for sex. For guys its that they are too disinterested/cool for sex. Nevertheless I think a lot of sex happens. After all they have many love hotels. Plus many Japanese go to sex workers of various sorts. There are prostitutes, hostesses, and girls who are paid to… Read more »
Also of note, Japan has:
High levels of industrial pollution, lots of plastic products with endocrine disruptors like BPA & pthalates, pesticides, lots and lots of stress, and now radioactive waste spewing out of Fukushima for the last year-ish.
All of these factors contribute to declines in testosterone in men.
Plus a lot of the most aggressive, high-T Japanese were killed off in WWII before they could reproduce, thus producing artificial selection of less aggressive men in subsequent generations.
That’s exactly what I was thinking DB. If everyone is happy what’s the problem.? And shouldn’t the headline be “Feminism Wins in Japan”? I see something similar starting here. The Slate article is a little more positive on the turn of events.
That 17 to 36 percent increase in 2 years is absolutely stunning though.
“Of the 1,000 single men in their 20s and 30s polled by Lifenet, a Japanese life-insurance company, 75 percent described themselves as grass-eating men.”
75% is a lot. It seems that they are choosing a simpler way of life because they have no money due to twenty year long economic downturn. Women are expensive; playing computer games is cheap.
Slate article is here:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2009/06/the_herbivores_dilemma.html
Are they happy?
That seems like vital information missing from the story although it hints at a “no”, it might just be the angle the story was pitched at. At any rate a reduced population is probably a good thing, but if it is not they can always increase immigration.
Living in Tokyo since over 30 years, I think, some reduction of the population is not bad at all – it is crowded with 126 million people on these few islands and with over 36 million people during rush-hour in Metropolitan Tokyo area. There is a lot of activity going on here day and night, and sex for sure is not everything. Sex? There is plenty of sex available, your choice what you need and nightlife is fairly open and friendly and legal. Here you can find everything what you need as a man, any form of sex you can… Read more »
I really don’t know and whatever explanation I could give would seem very superficial since I don’t know that much about the country.
But one I can say is young men with no interest in sex is a GOOD thing not a bad thing. A lot of the negative behaviors men do is caused by having a overheated sex drive. So less young men obsessed with sex means less sexual harassment, aggressive behavior and deception in dating.
Herbivores cause less trouble than predators.
I get what your trying to say but….Darwin did not get everything right but you do realize that without sexual selection you might not exist. There are a lot of negatives in dating but there are positives as well. Even if you could enact less deception in dating you do realize logically that would negate the existence of even what some would call the best of the human race (bird mating behavior is a good starting point). Herbivores do not cause less trouble, that’s relative. I could introduce a foreign herbivore to a new environment and cause competition between two… Read more »
Yay ! Males no longer want to opress women by having sex ! Feminist victory, heh. More seriously: men there don’t want to have sex because they are dead tired from work, it is stressful and working too hard is a way to show your dedication to the company (having a family member that died from overworking is for quite a few a badge of honor). Younger guys simply don’t want to share their fathers’ fate so they backpedal furiously whenever a female tries to get laid with them. Of course, it is an atrocious simplification, but you get the… Read more »
I really thing the rest of the world should follow suit.
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I think another reason for this is the lifestyle in Japan. It’s very expensive and the thought of having a child or being in a relationship is not money wise. Career and stress level is another reason why some people do not have the drive to do it. A relative of mine hates it here in Japan because of all the high taxes and hopes to migrate to other country. and lastly I think the other group of people in Japan that is not career oriented are very satisfied with their hands. some studies show that men who masturbates a… Read more »
“If no one’s having sex, Japan’s birthrate can’t increase. And it needs to: the country’s population dropped by a record number in 2010.”
It’s birthrate doesn’t need to increase. It just needs to open up on its immigration policy if it’s so consumed by economics, like the rest of us are.
That just trades one problem for another.
If you do that then in a century or two there will be reports of how “native” Japanese people are going extinct.
“they prefer not to make the first move, they like to split the bill, and they’re not particularly motivated by sex.”
Male feminists.
Could be the economic context. One factor is that Japan has a much more workaholic culture than just about anywhere in the world. I don’t know if that’s gotten worse in recent years, but being overworked is very common in Japan. Maybe working long hours just doesn’t feel as fulfilling as it used to be, and with the recession, anxiety about your job translates into lack of interest in other things.
This is actually pretty funny, in a I-have-no-direct-relation-with-this-social-issue-therefore-I-am-not-bothered-by-it kind of way; men are always treated like sexual dogs, yet here they are being treated like “herbivores.” However, I don’t think this has much to do with women getting jobs. Many women over here in the U.S. have careers, and yet men are still categorized as “selfish, sex hounds;” also, as you pointed out, the percentage of women who are not interested in sex has also increased. I think maybe this has more to do with an oppressive/repressive culture and high levels of depression(also, seeking treatment for mental illnesses such as… Read more »
I don’t know about that, isn’t it plausible that raising the cost of being a husband can lead to some men to graciefully opt out of the marriage contract?
Maybe this is a reflection of modern individualism.
get me to Japan and i will find the way to have as much sex as i can 😉
I think Japan is something of a contradiction. There is a big porn industry in Japan-but folks aren’t procreating-and asexuality is rising. That said, there are Japanese having sex. The biggest orgy in the world was in Japan. Swinging in Japan is becoming much bigger. the Procreation issue can be handled in part by careful incentives that support parents more effectively.There is a reason why Sweden has a higher birthrate than france or Italy. I’m not saying Sweden is utopia. This stuff would also have to be adapted to Japanese sensibilities. The thing is:housing in Japan is insanely expensive-which makes… Read more »
its a sadd problem here, japanese wifes also have it.
very unromantic country.
This is what happens when a society messes around with gender roles and identities. In case you haven’t picked up on it, American men are rejecting American women too.
Well I think if there is no sex drive, make the men watch porn. That is what they do with pandas in captivity to get them to breed. Seriously, they do that. Look it up.
Sex has always been very different in Japan than it is in western cultures. In Japan, the idea that a man should turn to his wife for sexual pleasure is a very new and very Western idea. For centuries, there have been two categories of women: wives and water trade women. Wives were expected to be modest, frugal, and good at rearing children. They were not expected to be witty, intellectual, or sexy. Water trade women, on the other hand (the old courtesans, prostitutes, dancers, geisha, waitresses, and the modern bar hostess) all worked jobs that required them to be… Read more »
You’ve got to be kidding me. Japan is just returning to their original roots, a mostly pastoral island nation that barely registered a blip in global events for hundreds of years, like Indonesia. Westernization didn’t kill their sex drive, in fact it was Westernization that first sparked their “animal spirits” since the Meiji Restoration. Japan’s WWII adventures were a product of Westernization (although bastardized), not the other way around.
China for instance has adopted Westernization with full force in recent years and you see a lot of testosterone today in their society, much more aggressive than Japan today.
Exactly. This chick knows what she’s talking about. Jon, the good part of westernization, namely, capitalism is masculine at its core and encourages the sex drives of both genders, but the bad part that Katy is referring to (the thing that saps men’s sexual energy) is feminism. Feminism tries to overturn traditional gender roles and the problem with that is that when women start acting like men, it’s a TURN OFF! Same as when men act too feminine and metro. So when men feel emasculated (as they do now watching millions of Japanese women take their jobs and leave them… Read more »
Their women aren’t feminist in any sense of the word. Their men simply don’t care as much about sex as men here do. I know this is a difficult thing to understand because in Western society today there are only two important drives: the drive for sex and the drive for money. The drive for money has been there for a long time but the importance of sex is very recent. In the 18th and 19th century the greatest concerns were not sexual. People strove for things like rank, honour, respectability, social esteem. So Japan is not so much an… Read more »
Because Japanese society is too oppressive. It doesn’t allow people to develop their personalities. Women are still discriminated against a lot more than in the West, and there are almost no out of wedlock births. I believe if you took out all the out of wedlock births, the US birth rate would be the same as Japan’s or lower.
There is no evidence that women are discriminated against in the west, but there is evidence of preferential hiring.
Where is the evidence on Japan?
*sigh* But they are having sex. Why else do you think Japan has a massive sex industry built around porn and prostitutes and a culture of making women sexual objects? What they are not having is relationships and babies. You need to look at it from the other side too – as a women you get knocked up its not all that expensive, time consuming or morally difficult to have to aborted. Compared to “normal” Japanese men – men who molest women at every chance, who go on sex tours throughout Asia, men who have enabled things like ‘Love Hotels’… Read more »
“Compared to “normal” Japanese men – men who molest women at every chance, who go on sex tours throughout Asia”
Do you have any evidence at all that is representitive of “normal” japanese men? There would have to be evidence that is a majority to make such claims as “normal”, otherwise it’s just an unsupported stereotype. How many nerds, how many perverts? Where is the evidence?
In Japan, it’s very common for women to be molested in public transporation systems. Look it up. It’s gotten so bad they’ve had to have their own compartment, but if there’s no room and a woman finds herself with the men, the men thinks she’s free game. Japanese men are also not afraid to grope women…in plain view.
Plus, there are also stores in Japan that sell used panties from Japanese schoolgirls.
Its not quite as common as you think it is. It happens for sure. But its not that common. India for instance has a big problem with this. I took the Japanese transit.
Typically no one will even look at you. They consider it rude.