A new report released by the Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has found an increasing number of Japanese young people as well as married couples report themselves as being “uninterested” in sex, with fewer people getting physical with other human beings compared to 2004. It’s difficult to know what to think of these results. On the one hand, the Japanese media loves to identify and define new trends in society, sometimes creating them to a certain degree, and you could debate whether social trends such as bento danshi (“bento boys” who bring their own bento lunches to work), “parasite singles” (people who live off of their parents into their 20s and 30s, never getting serious about life) or the current trends towards “herbivore men” (men who are less ambitious and don’t care about sex) are valid social movements or are merely temporary fashions. On the other hand, people pulling back from healthy, intimate human relationships is a serious problem, as Japan’s hypercharged society progresses into the 21st century. Some of this can be attributed to stress, an over-abundance of communication and twitter feeds and the Internet. According to my wife, her married friends who’ve become “sexless” report a loss of interest in the subject by both parties once children are born, almost like a switch has been flipped. What can be done to keep the Japanese race from dying out?
Oh the humanity, fewer Japanese interested in “H”?
