Japan's Low Mojo

By Liz Langley, AlterNet. Posted March 24, 2006.

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."

Liz Langley is a freelance writer in Orlando, Fla.

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