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Why are people no longer having sex in Japan?

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PAULINK

I microwave steaks.
Not enough mention of the Vice documentary. It's very relevant to this issue.

The commodificatoin of every aspect of a sexual and intimate relationships has been a big cause of the decline.

The amount of porn available is insane, at least whenever I went into those shops in tokyo. FLOORS I tell you. This doesn't even cover hentai haha.

But this article brang up an interesting perspective, how woman cannot really juggle a career and family life. It's interesting that they don't want to deal with the emotional stress that goes into a relationship, I wonder where that stems from.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
It's OK gaf. I'll take responsibility for repopulating Japan.

Edit: Since all porn in Japan is censored, what if guys get freaked out when vaginas aren't blurry/pixelated in real life?
 

Data West

coaches in the WNBA
It's ok, the Tokyo Pimp is taking care of all the single ladies in Japan
tumblr_mqx5pqzPmA1qhjbxeo2_500.gif
 

Azulsky

Member
Something must be wrong with the alcohol.


But seriously it sounds like the society developed in a way that makes the whole situation very hard. Deep systemic problem as the article highlights.

Most people heavily consider their economic situation before wedlock and child rearing. These people are doing the same and the system is too rigid.

I would bet the cost of living has only increased as well so the standard arrangement of 1 breadwinner and one stay-at-home parent forces shoe string budgets.

Are japanese younglings raised entirely at home until they hit primary school or are daycares a thing in Japan?

I am going to assume that in Japan multi-generational involvement is not a thing, its pretty common for the grandparents to take care of kids too. My maternal grandparents did much of my caretaking in my youngest years. Some cultures do this pretty fluidly with multi-generational homes.
 
Are japanese younglings raised entirely at home until they hit primary school or are daycares a thing in Japan? Many mothers do take leaves of absence + maternity leaves here in the US before returning to work when the child is 24 months old.

Generally mothers stay at home to raise them for a lot longer than that. I'm not 100% sure how long maternity leave is but they do get it and it is no where near 24 months.

In my experience, some mothers try to return to the workforce after childbirth (putting children in daycare for a couple of days a week) but it's usually different part time work. If they keep on at their old jobs they are usually expected to work the long hours they did before they got pregnant. Day care centres can be difficult to find though, and there are big waiting lists to get in.

EDIT: There are a lot of multigenerational homes in Japan, but I've never known grandparents raising children to be wide spread. A lot of the time the grandparents are pretty old, so the mother has to look after them too. Or the parents have moved to a bigger city for work and the grandparents still live away in the countryside.
 

Fantasmo

Member
The answer is right here:

This sense of crushing obligation affects men just as much. Satoru Kishino, 31, belongs to a large tribe of men under 40 who are engaging in a kind of passive rebellion against traditional Japanese masculinity. Amid the recession and unsteady wages, men like Kishino feel that the pressure on them to be breadwinning economic warriors for a wife and family is unrealistic. They are rejecting the pursuit of both career and romantic success.

"It's too troublesome," says Kishino, when I ask why he's not interested in having a girlfriend. "I don't earn a huge salary to go on dates and I don't want the responsibility of a woman hoping it might lead to marriage." Japan's media, which has a name for every social kink, refers to men like Kishino as "herbivores" or soshoku danshi (literally, "grass-eating men"). Kishino says he doesn't mind the label because it's become so commonplace. He defines it as "a heterosexual man for whom relationships and sex are unimportant".

And here:
Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me."

Around 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after their first child. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the world's worst nations for gender equality at work. Social attitudes don't help. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives". In a telling Japanese ballet production of Bizet's Carmen a few years ago, Carmen was portrayed as a career woman who stole company secrets to get ahead and then framed her lowly security-guard lover José. Her end was not pretty.

Prime minister Shinzo Abe recently trumpeted long-overdue plans to increase female economic participation by improving conditions and daycare, but Tomita says things would have to improve "dramatically" to compel her to become a working wife and mother. "I have a great life. I go out with my girl friends – career women like me – to French and Italian restaurants. I buy stylish clothes and go on nice holidays. I love my independence."

Tomita sometimes has one-night stands with men she meets in bars, but she says sex is not a priority, either. "I often get asked out by married men in the office who want an affair. They assume I'm desperate because I'm single." She grimaces, then shrugs. "Mendokusai."

Mendokusai translates loosely as "Too troublesome" or "I can't be bothered". It's the word I hear both sexes use most often when they talk about their relationship phobia. Romantic commitment seems to represent burden and drudgery, from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan to the uncertain expectations of a spouse and in-laws. And the centuries-old belief that the purpose of marriage is to produce children endures. Japan's Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is "preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like".

Men don't give a shit anymore, because they can't reach the level that is expected of them. Women don't give a shit anymore because they don't want to be stuck as housewives after having a child.
 

leadbelly

Banned
I remember watching something about this. The show wasn't solely about this, but the subject was explored. They have bars in Japan where girls can go and pay for some company. There was this one Japanese woman that was stunningly beautiful, yet she had to go to one of these bars on her birthday to get some company. The presenter couldn't believe that she had to pay a man to give her some company. (lol)
 

Azulsky

Member
Generally mothers stay at home to raise them for a lot longer than that. I'm not 100% sure how long maternity leave is but they do get it and it is no where near 24 months.

In my experience, some mothers try to return to the workforce after childbirth (putting children in daycare for a couple of days a week) but it's usually different part time work. If they keep on at their old jobs they are usually expected to work the long hours they did before they got pregnant. Day care centres can be difficult to find though, and there are big waiting lists to get in.

EDIT: There are a lot of multigenerational homes in Japan, but I've never known grandparents raising children to be wide spread. A lot of the time the grandparents are pretty old, so the mother has to look after them too. Or the parents have moved to a bigger city for work and the grandparents still live away in the countryside.

Hmm thats interesting. I was just talking to a coworker about this recently who has a 1 year old and his wife is quitting work to stay at home to take care of the kid. They probably will take the time to have another kid nwo so that in about 6 years time they can have both in primary/near primary school so she can return to work. He has a pretty solid job but they have to cut a bunch of the fat out of the family budget to make it work.
We have pretty low costs of living here(LA) so I cant imagine what it would be like with higher living costs.

It seems part of my post got deleted. New distro is not liking my wifi adapter
 

kirblar

Member
The answer is right here:



And here:


Men don't give a shit anymore, because they can't reach the level that is expected of them. Women don't give a shit anymore because they don't want to be stuck as housewives after having a child.
Requiring 2 incomes to raise a child makes child-rearing a luxury good.
 
The answer is right here:



And here:


Men don't give a shit anymore, because they can't reach the level that is expected of them. Women don't give a shit anymore because they don't want to be stuck as housewives after having a child.

What do kids have to do with having sex...?
 

Fantasmo

Member
What do kids have to do with having sex...?

Why don't you read what I quoted instead of me doing the job for you?
Here's I'll throw you a bone, cherry picked because the whole article literally lays it out for you but this is one aspect on each side that sums it well:

"I don't earn a huge salary to go on dates and I don't want the responsibility of a woman hoping it might lead to marriage."
--
"Mendokusai translates loosely as "Too troublesome" or "I can't be bothered". It's the word I hear both sexes use most often when they talk about their relationship phobia."
They're so relationship phobic for various reasons on both sides that it got to the point that sex itself is happening a lot less.
 

Fantasmo

Member
I guess Japanese women took a look at Japanese porn and went NOPE

I don't blame them.

Japanese porn sucks but Japanese women are hot, on mute anyway... if that's honestly how they are in bed, no thanks. They all look and sound like they absolutely hate sex.
 
Why don't you read what I quoted instead of me doing the job for you?
Here's I'll throw you a bone, cherry picked because the whole article literally lays it out for you but this is one aspect on each side that sums it well:


They're so relationship phobic for various reasons on both sides that it got to the point that sex itself is happening a lot less.

It seems like the West's casual hookup culture hasn't really translated all that much over there. It's really bizarre that young people aren't experimenting at all without the pressure of marriage/children, especially without the religious taboos against premarital sex. The lack of birth control that someone mentioned above may factor into that. And socialization may play a roll as well. In American culture, there is social pressure to have sexual partners as young and as often as possible before getting married.
 
Japan needs to adopt a progressive measures when it comes to maternity leave and such. Also change its mindset when it comes to mothers.

Lots of Canadian provinces now provide good maternity leave and has encouraged a mini-baby boom today
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Are Japanese girls interested in white boys? Or is that pretty taboo in Japan? I've heard their culture is pretty xenophobic concerning certain things and was just wondering if that applied to dating as well.

In the thread on the Vice story, someone noted that a lot of Japanese women actually leave the country when they want to start a family.

Not enough mention of the Vice documentary. It's very relevant to this issue.

The commodificatoin of every aspect of a sexual and intimate relationships has been a big cause of the decline.

Again, is that a cause? Or a symptom?

The article in this thread states that a lot of people seek commoditized intimacy in order to fill the hole left by deciding to not engage in full relationships.

What do kids have to do with having sex...?

According to an above poster, contraception is apparently still uncommon in Japan.
 

Demon Ice

Banned
I realize this is a serious topic but I can't help but find humor that this article would pop up right after the new Pokemon games just came out.
 

Fantasmo

Member
Japan needs to adopt a progressive measures when it comes to maternity leave and such. Also change its mindset when it comes to mothers.

Lots of Canadian provinces now provide good maternity leave and has encouraged a mini-baby boom today

And they need to start paying the average man more too.
 

apana

Member
You guys are going to laugh at me but the solution to this is hair. A hairy Japan will do better. If you want to use an anime character as inspiration use this:

Water-641-712x1024.jpg
 

Sinfamy

Member
The man are are too socially secluded/ isolated, timid and awkward with terrible social and love making skills, and the women are used to that, and expect so little of them.
That is why drool all over tall, outgoing, and handsome westerners.

If the Japanese men put away their 3DS, took care of themselves, got a jolt of confidence, and started being romantic, you'd be surprised what a swift change you'd see. Instead they barely talk to their women, constantly look at their phone, never touch them, and are sometimes downright mean and demanding. I have see this countless times.
 

cruets

Member
Mormons, porn outlawed, lots of kids. Japan, porn everywhere, anything you want to see, less kids.

The guys in Japan need to stop spanking it and get the girls drunk
 

RM8

Member
Some of these comments. Lol. It's so easy to tell when people have zero understanding of a foreign culture, yet they feel like (they're experts).
 

Avixph

Member
You guys are going to laugh at me but the solution to this is hair. A hairy Japan will do better. If you want to use an anime character as inspiration use this:

Water-641-712x1024.jpg
No hair is filthy and one must be completely smooth and hairless in order to be pure.
 

Fantasmo

Member
The woman is expected to stay home regardless of income.
And the average man can barely afford to sustain himself, let alone himself and 2 others.
The man are a bunch of socially secluded pansies and women are used to that, and expect so little of them. That is why drool all over tall, outgoing, and handsome westerners.

If the Japanese men put away their 3DS, took care of themselves, got a jolt of confidence, and started being romantic, you'd be surprised what a swift change you'd see.
You're deluding yourself. Japanese men are some of the hardest workers on the planet, where suicide is common if they feel they've failed.

From wikipedia:
Suicide in Japan has become a significant national social-issue.[1][2] Japan has one of the world's highest suicide rates, and the Japanese government reported the rate for 2006 as being the ninth highest in the world.[3] 71% of suicides in Japan were male,[2] and it is the leading cause of death in men aged 20–44.[4][5]

Factors in suicide include unemployment (due to the economic recession in the 1990s), depression, and social pressures.[4] In 2007, the National Police Agency revised the categorization of motives for suicide into a division of 50 reasons with up to three reasons listed for each suicide.[6] Suicides traced to losing jobs surged 65.3 percent while those attributed to hardships in life increased 34.3 percent.
Depression remained at the top of the list for the third year in a row, rising 7.1 percent from the previous year.[6]

In Japanese culture there is a long history of honorable suicide, such as ritual suicide by Samurai to avoid being captured, flying one's plane into the enemy during WWII, or charging into the enemy fearlessly to prevent bringing shame on one's family.[7]

There has been a rapid increase in suicides since the 1990s. For example, 1998 saw a 34.7% increase over the previous year.[1] This has prompted the Japanese government to react by increasing funding to treat the causes of suicide and those recovering from failed suicides.

If you ask me, this new generation is just playing the hand that was dealt to them in the best way possible. The family option can lead to disaster as they saw from the previous generations so they just stopped playing altogether.
 

xbhaskarx

Member
Aoyama cites one man in his early 30s, a virgin, who can't get sexually aroused unless he watches female robots on a game similar to Power Rangers.

This is pretty much how I imagine most people who are into Japanese cartoons, comics, video games, and whatnot, including those on GAF with anime avatars...
 
The man are a bunch of socially secluded pansies and women are used to that, and expect so little of them. That is why drool all over tall, outgoing, and handsome westerners.

If the Japanese men put away their 3DS, took care of themselves, got a jolt of confidence, and started being romantic, you'd be surprised what a swift change you'd see.

...women still wouldn't marry them, as it would require giving up their careers.

If the US had matured culturally but didn't have the Civil Rights Act, we'd probably see a lot of the same problems. We have the opposite problem in fact, an increasing number of successful career women complaining that men are not falling over themselves to marry them. Both cultures have led to less marriages and lower birth rates is seems though.
 
Yeah, the reason why is in the end of your quote there.

Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me."

Around 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after their first child. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the world's worst nations for gender equality at work. Social attitudes don't help. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives". In a telling Japanese ballet production of Bizet's Carmen a few years ago, Carmen was portrayed as a career woman who stole company secrets to get ahead and then framed her lowly security-guard lover José. Her end was not pretty.

Japan, like some other nations such as South Korea (which has a birthrate just about as low as Japan's), has an unbelievably low birthrate because they have failed to adapt to the modern world and are sticking with their now-traditional sexist systems that pretty much force women permanently out of the labor force as soon as they get married. That kind of serious sexism is incompatible with the world today, so women respond by not getting married or having children. Things will only get better if Japan and South Korea ever manage to lighten up on the sexism.

In Europe, for example, the countries which still have the most labor-force-sexism, which are in southern Europe (Spain, Italy, etc.) have lower birthrates than the nations of northern Europe, which are more equal. That is not a coincidence.
 

RM8

Member
Yeah, the reason why is in the end of your quote there.

]

Japan, like some other nations such as South Korea (which has a birthrate just about as bad as Japan's), has an unbelievably low birthrate because they have failed to adapt to the modern world and are sticking with their now-traditional sexist systems that pretty much force women permanently out of the labor force as soon as they get married. That kind of serious sexism is incompatible with the world today, so women respond by not getting married or having children. Things will only get better if Japan and South Korea ever manage to lighten up on the sexism.

In Europe, for example, the countries which still have the most labor-force-sexism, which are in southern Europe (Spain, Italy, etc.) have lower birthrates than the nations of northern Europe, which are more equal. That is not a coincidence.
No. It's loli anime.
 

ezrarh

Member
I have to laugh at the term "parasaito shingurus" - parasite singles.

Facetious comments aside, this issue is more a symptom of the corporate work culture they have and the economic realities of the younger folks. We see similar behavior (but not to the extreme that Japan faces due to other cultural factors) in American and western European societies. The fact that people are required to have a 2 income household to raise a child and maintain a standard of living they're used to makes it more likely that they will decide to hold back on having kids or have less kids or have no kids at all as we see with the Japanese.
 

Fantasmo

Member
Yeah, the reason why is in the end of your quote there.

]

Japan, like some other nations such as South Korea (which has a birthrate just about as bad as Japan's), has an unbelievably low birthrate because they have failed to adapt to the modern world and are sticking with their now-traditional sexist systems that pretty much force women permanently out of the labor force as soon as they get married. That kind of serious sexism is incompatible with the world today, so women respond by not getting married or having children. Things will only get better if Japan and South Korea ever manage to lighten up on the sexism.

In Europe, for example, the countries which still have the most labor-force-sexism, which are in southern Europe (Spain, Italy, etc.) have lower birthrates than the nations of northern Europe, which are more equal. That is not a coincidence.

Don't forget that currently the average Japanese man isn't financially able to support a family either. Poster after poster keeps skipping over that.

This isn't just a one gender problem that happened overnight. This is stemming back from the 80s and 90s bubble and has gotten more extreme to the point where the current generation isn't playing ball. Check my post above.
 
According to an above poster, contraception is apparently still uncommon in Japan.
Oh, condoms are pretty widely accessible but that's about it. There was no sexual revolution of women finding freedom through the pill. According to some of my friends, it's considered "romantic" not to use contraception anyway :/

It seems like the West's casual hookup culture hasn't really translated all that much over there. It's really bizarre that young people aren't experimenting at all without the pressure of marriage/children, especially without the religious taboos against premarital sex. The lack of birth control that someone mentioned above may factor into that. And socialization may play a roll as well. In American culture, there is social pressure to have sexual partners as young and as often as possible before getting married.
They don't have religious pressures, but there are still a lot of societal factors. A lot of people (especially women) are still fairly conservative about sex, and like I said, there was no sexual revolution like we had in the west.
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Oh come on GAF we've had this thread time and time again. At this point there should be an OT.
 
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