Japan's Low Mojo

Remember when you were a kid, if you became smitten with someone you'd write them a note that read: "I like you. Do you like me? Check one: Yes. No." Adults still use the check-box idea, but in different forms: sending a drink, holding eye contact and -- in daring circumstances -- actually calling one another.

Sometimes I'd like to send a drink to the entire country of Japan. I've never been there, but they've got great aesthetics and good-looking men. Plus, they've given a lot to Americans: sushi, kanji, sake, snow monkeys and an elevated standard of "cute."

So when I read in the 2005 Durex Global Sex Survey that, out of 41 countries, the Japanese were having the least amount of sex, I thought maybe I could get some special envoyship to go help them out. I know there's more to life than sex -- one day I even plan on finding out what that is -- but I'm still curious to know why the Japanese, who deserve some fun, aren't having more of it.

The survey showed that while the global average of sexual frequency was 103 times per year, the Japanese average was only 45 -- a cliff-drop from Singapore's, at 73. How accurately people reported their shag rate is hard to say, but all the lower-ranking countries were Asian, except Sweden. The Greeks fared best, having sex 138 times per year, with the Croatians right behind them (that didn't come out right, but you know what I mean).

"I don't believe Japanese people don't like sex otherwise, why are there so many sex businesses everywhere?" my friend K, a Japanese woman now living in Australia, wrote me via email. She reconsiders: "Then again, maybe the survey is accurate, and that's why there are lots of sex businesses."

"Japanese sexuality seems profoundly contradictory to the outsider," writes fetish diva Midori, a self-described "globe-trotting kinkster who parties and teaches cool classes on fun sex and wild kink all over the world" (where the hell was that booth on career day?).

According to Midori, who was raised in Tokyo, "Proper society looks down their nose upon the underground kinksters in Japan, as they do in the U.S." But as an outsider, it's difficult to piece Japanese sexuality together. Generalizations are dangerous in analyzing anything, but while researching that Japanese low-sex statistic, I did find some interesting elements. For instance, the Tokyo clinic that treated 200 women who hadn't had sex with their husbands in at least 20 years -- if ever -- as reported in the Guardian. Kim Myong-gan, who runs the clinic, observed that Japanese men frequently lose interest in sex (or don't want it to begin with), often viewing their wives as "substitute mothers." His short-term solution for Japan's 'desperate housewives?' Find male volunteers to take them on dates, then "in almost all cases, arrange regular assignations in hotel rooms."

But even if the spirit is willing, the flesh may be exhausted. "Japanese [husbands] come home from work at 7, 8, 9 at night," notes Dr. Robert Moore, an anthropology professor at Rollins College, and many choose to go out with colleagues after that. And the women in some Japanese families work, too. Many of these married couples have good relationships, Moore says, but gender segregation makes it tougher for them to relate to each other.

Among older Japanese couples, the Washington Post reports, having their husbands retire after years of full-time work can be overwhelming for homemakers who have grown accustomed to doing their own thing during the daytime. This sudden, late-life pressure to keep their husbands happy has triggered full-blown stress disorders in some older Japanese women (therapists there have helpfully dubbed it "Retired Husband Syndrome").

For a variety of reasons, many young Japanese delay or simply avoid marriage -- and some are looking to marry foreign folk instead of their own. In a 2004 story, the Christian Science Monitor observed that in a changing Japan, where more women are becoming financially independent, many are starting to seek out Western partners who might treat them more equitably. And a 2004 USA Today story noted, "Only in Japan would a popular weekly news magazine deem it necessary to exhort the nation's youth to abstain from sexual abstinence: 'Young people, don't hate sex,' AERA magazine pleaded in a report detailing a precarious drop in sales of condoms and in business at Japan's rent-by-the-hour 'love hotels.'"