Japan's "virginity crisis"
Virgin territory: why the Japanese are turning their backs on sex
The grounds of Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park have been colonised by beautiful youth: women and men beneath the cherry blossoms surrounded by bottles of wine, sake and shochu, cases of beer and plastic bags stuffed with finger foods – drinking, playing games and sharing smartphone screens as the buds bloom and fall.
Hanami (flower-viewing) parties are a centuries-old rite of spring, a national symbol of life’s beauty and brevity. But as I walk by them this month, I can’t help but wonder if any of the pink-faced revellers are hooking up, or even care enough to try.
“Sexless Japan” is now a reliable media meme. Bolstered by a plummeting birth rate and an ageing population (leading to dire predictions of a future Japan devoid of Japanese), this portrait of the nation’s celibate society has been further enhanced by a paradox: Japan’s cultural imagination is embedded with erotic imagery, from 17th-century shunga woodblock prints to what non-Japanese today often mistakenly call hentai (perverse) pornographic manga and anime. The sex lives of the Japanese, the story goes, have been almost entirely sublimated.
I once wrote about this phenomenon (sekkusu-banare, drifting away from sex) in these pages, and talked about it in a BBC documentary called No Sex Please, We’re Japanese. Both times I was careful to imply what is now obvious: it isn’t just happening in Japan.
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The Guardian
Young people in Japan – particularly men – are shunning physical love, and they’re not the only onesThe grounds of Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park have been colonised by beautiful youth: women and men beneath the cherry blossoms surrounded by bottles of wine, sake and shochu, cases of beer and plastic bags stuffed with finger foods – drinking, playing games and sharing smartphone screens as the buds bloom and fall.
Hanami (flower-viewing) parties are a centuries-old rite of spring, a national symbol of life’s beauty and brevity. But as I walk by them this month, I can’t help but wonder if any of the pink-faced revellers are hooking up, or even care enough to try.
“Sexless Japan” is now a reliable media meme. Bolstered by a plummeting birth rate and an ageing population (leading to dire predictions of a future Japan devoid of Japanese), this portrait of the nation’s celibate society has been further enhanced by a paradox: Japan’s cultural imagination is embedded with erotic imagery, from 17th-century shunga woodblock prints to what non-Japanese today often mistakenly call hentai (perverse) pornographic manga and anime. The sex lives of the Japanese, the story goes, have been almost entirely sublimated.
I once wrote about this phenomenon (sekkusu-banare, drifting away from sex) in these pages, and talked about it in a BBC documentary called No Sex Please, We’re Japanese. Both times I was careful to imply what is now obvious: it isn’t just happening in Japan.
Read >>
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