Tokyo Torpor

Whilst Japan does appear to have an inordinately high percentage of panty pilferers and public transport perverts, the number of those actually indulging in more civilised and reciprocal sexual practices appears to be rapidly decreasing. A situation highlighted a couple of years ago with the ‘how much other nationalities are getting it’ global sex survey, an investigation that saw Japan come bottom with an average of only 45 bouts of fornication a year — way behind the table topping Greeks grand tally of 138.

Yet since then things have actually got worse, as a national sex survey last year found that the number had drooped even further, with an annual average of only 17 sessions between the sheets. A figure that makes the hardly salacious second to last place Singaporeans seem positively sex mad.

To make matters worse however, a report released earlier this week appears to paint an even gloomier picture, with many couples apparently now even foregoing the odd furtive fumble, as a staggering 34.6 percent of married couples (aged between 16 and 49) have sex less than once a month. Such relationships classed by the Japan Society of Sexual Science as ‘sexless‘. A figure that unlike other things has risen from a slightly lower but still less than lustful 31.9 percent in 2002.

So all in all it’s not exactly a rosy picture, and one that Kunio Kitamura, a member of the panel that carried out the latest poll and a director of the Japan Family Planning Association, is clearly worried about. The high ranking and presumably highly paid official justifying his substantial salary and social standing by insightfully stating, “The ratio of sexless couples has been increasing in recent polls. I think we have to make a connection between the increasing sexless rate and declining birthrates.”