Back in June 2011, British prime minister David Cameron backed proposals tackling the sexualisation of British children, in a bid to dilute the culture of sex that has swept western nations. The rhetoric goes that the ‘oversexualisation’ of society, as represented in everything from ‘lads mags’ to advertising boards promoting shampoo, has fuelled a surplus of sexual desire that is thought to have contributed to the rise of teenage pregnancy and rape cases in the UK.
Compare this to Japan, a country where, according to a recent survey, a third of young men have no interest in sex. Moreover, 50% of young women are not dating. Could this be an ‘undersexualised’ society? Has this impacted Japan’s population geography?
In 2007, Japans population reached a tipping point. It was the first year in its history (excluding 1945) where the number of deaths exceeded the number of births. In 2007 there were 2,000 more deaths than births. In 2011 that figure rose to approximately 204,000, and it’s a figure that is accelerating. Indeed, at 23.1%, Japan has the highest proportion of over-65s in the world, and at 13.2%, the world’s lowest proportion of under 14s. Japan’s population peaked at 127.7 million in 2007, and is forecast to shrink to a mere 47 million by 2100. What are the economic and social forces behind this?
Too much work, too little sex: Japan is a country where sales of adult diapers exceed child diapers, and where more public money is spent on healthcare than defence. It’s also one of the world’s most industrialised countries, with an agricultural sector comprising 1.5% of its GDP and services sector comprising 75.7% of GDP. For Japanese society, this means that a white collar lifestyle predominates. High salaries with high workloads in an already expensive country has meant that starting a family has become a low priority, if a priority at all, on a Japanese professional’s wish list. The little available data on the reasons why indicates that raising a child is too expensive, and that the pressure of work leaves little time available to look after anyone other than themselves.
Compounding this battle between a high flying job versus a family is a culture somewhat void of sexualisation. It is unlikely that, on a stroll through Tokyo, you will come across much imagery that is overtly sexual. In contrast with the west, sex doesn’t sell in Japan. Among males 16 to 19 year old, 36% have no interest in sex, and some even despise it. The figure is even higher (59%) for females in the same age category. These respondents often cite greater interest in comics, computer games and socialising through the internet. A low level of cultural sexualisation is not without its benefits; the rape rate is one of the lowest in the world.
However, the net result of these socio-cultural and economic factors is that the fertility rate is astonishingly low. According to the UN the figure is 1.27.
Japan is therefore facing a demographic crisis. The number of dependents per active member of the labour force is increasing, and in an unusual situation, there are more jobs available than people to do them. Furthermore, in future decades Japan may have an oversupply of infrastructure relative to the amount of people who can use it.
Several policy options could be under consideration by Japan’s decision makers. Not all of these are practical or even advisable, but we may see them looked at in years ahead:
Encourage Fertility – This would help ensure that the labour market and services such as transport are not undersupplied. It can be done in at least three ways. The first is through pro-natal incentives, such as child tax breaks for couples who desire children. The second is to restrict or even ban abortion (Japanese abortion laws are some of the most liberal in the world). For example, restrict abortions to the first trimester only. Laws such as these will inevitably conflict with women’s and couples rights. The third, and perhaps the most untried, is to sow the seeds for a more sexualised Japanese culture, one with more lust and desire, in an attempt to situate relationships as more desirable than the latest computer game.
Encourage Migraton – Japanese immigration and emigration have both been low. The ethnic mix of Japan is not diverse. 98.5% of Japan’s population is ethnically Japanese, with only a few other ethnic groups. In order to prevent an undersupply of labour, the country may have to encourage mass immigration. Given the unique culture and language of Japan, will foreigners want to come and live there? Would immigration cause ethnic tensions in this peaceful country?
Raise the Retirement Age – It has been calculated by United Nations researchers that the retirement age in Japan would have to be raised to 77 from 65 in order to rebalance its crippling dependency ratio. This would shorten the average amount of retirement years from 14 years to two for men, and from 19 years to seven for woman.
A blueprint for the rest of the world? Is Japan’s pattern of rising, peaking, and falling gross population going to be a defining demographic trend in the 21st century? In Japan, Germany, Russia, Czech Republic, Estonia and several more countries it already is, with several other low growth European countries, such as Italy, forecast to head the same way.
Low sexualisation is unlikely to be an important factor of low growth in Europe. The worldwide trends of continued urbanisation, the growth of white collar jobs, and the decline of blue collar jobs as an overall percentage of the economic makeup have acted as the most effective mass contraception.
Given a course of continued social and economic development around the world, the ‘tipping point’ for world population could be as near as 2050, a date that many of the readers of this article could be witnessing.
The rhetoric of overpopulation doomsday scenarios should really be reversed. The warnings today should be about the unsustainable dangers of a shrinking population. This will no doubt be one of the key issues in sustainable development discourse for years to come.
Edward Morgan is a 4th Year Human Geography student at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Photo by Kevin Poh: Night Life @ Shinjuku, Tokyo
Comments
16 responses to “Sex (Or Not) And the Japanese Single”
Very interesting!
36% of males between 16-19 years of age don’t want to have sex? Heaven forbid. That’s got to be beyond culture – that’s some kind of a condition. The human animal is meant to want to have sex. Deeper research is required here. (Also look at what happens in Japanese culture between conception, birthing, and the first few months of life. That’s where the primal functions get damaged, if they do).
In thinking, maybe the middle-class is not such a great place to be after all? White collar jobs tend to enslave the mind – not just the body (like school). Maybe there are deep stressor’s going on that echo back and effect how we feel, or can feel, and even our capacity for sexual excitement?
No matter how much money we make, in evolutionary terms we’re a loser if we don’t reproduce. Does our ancient biology have an opinion on modern life that is different to industrialised society’s ideas?…different, maybe, to the culturalised human resource values created by Henry Ford and Co?
And is it even deliberate? Do the powers that be have an advanced understanding on population control? Desmond Morris has described our cities as a “human zoo”. It’s noteworthy that animals do not reproduce in bad zoo’s. Another thing to look at? Tokyo looks a bit like a zoo to me.
If these stats are accurate, there is something very wrong about the Japanese family life. Normal sexuality develops in an environment of balanced paternal love and support. Perversions of every sort derive from childhoods afflicted with unbalanced parenting. Children go through a process of separation from their mothers that is facilitated by the active involvement of their fathers in their lives. This enables boy to realize that their mothers are not their love objects, but are their fathers’, who are also the boys’ role models. It enables girls to find alternative love objects other than their mothers, with whom they already identify. Mess this up, and you get sexually confused adults.
This reads to me a bit like: “How to appropriately condition the development of your [already] screwed up child”.
The central problem goes way deeper. You should Google my “understanding mental sickness”.
The Japanese need a nice long Hong Kong massage. That would surely put some of them in the right mood for what they need to do so their population doesn’t shrink. Good luck with that anyways!
Japanese probably use Jo Your Self than actually doing something for real. That is why they have such problems. Maybe their government should try and start a new program and lots of awareness campaigns. Doing nothing is not going to help.
Japanese society is in a rigid bind between a patriarchal, Confusious-based family and work culture and a growing number of people who don’t agree with the old rules but have not yet found an alternative ethic to live by.
The old rules say that loyalty to family and to employer are paramount, that serving yourself is less important, and that the highest form of morality is to suffer for the greater good. This type of philosophy was in play well before the Meiji revolution, but in the period after WWII it was especially important, as in the nation’s rebuilding process the Japanese people were continually admonished to sacrifice everything for economic prosperity.
It worked, for a while, but a nation of salarymen and absent parents resulted in two generations of emotionally abandoned children. As the preceding generations got older, the following ones lost sight of what everyone was working so hard for. Now in today’s society the grandchildren of those who built the post WWII recovery had seen their parents never come home at night and the weekends and had been through the rigid and highly conforming educational and corporate systems, and many decided they would have no part of this.
Instead these vast numbers of adult children (derisively called “Cockroaches” by the Japanese media) live at home, work only part time jobs or not at all, and spend their time on the Internet or watching large amounts of media (anime and others). They have little or no social contact outside of their tightly-driven sphere, and hence the greater problem of fraternization or lack thereof.
Now with declining demographics and a greater sense within Japan that “something is wrong” there’s a widely perceived view that something has to be done to save society, but the social philosophy of Japanese culture is so steeply dug into Confucian methods that there’s no “Plan B” to fall back on, apart from the current drive to try and increase the fertility rate.
In the sixty years since WWII and really since the coming of the Black Ships, Japan has more than the rest of Asia a real taste of the Western world’s way of life. While Japan itself still functions like an Asian country, Western and particularly American tastes and viewpoints are coming into society, especially from the younger people. As a result Japan today is truthfully at a crossroads: it must choose if it’s going to be an Asian nation like China (who despite being labeled as Communist is very, very Confuscian in its outlook) or is it going to go all the way and become a Western nation in actual societal function, meaning nuclear families with more self-fulfillment less rigid rules in society overall. With the older generation with memories of WWII and the recovery slowly dying off the newer ones will eventually gain the power of their own society, but they will need to decide which way to go and given the fertility crisis they had better do it soon.
YFree, I haven’t been there for 25 years now, but in the intervening time I’ve stayed in touch via Japanese who live in the US and through media. It seems to me that Japan’s reproductive malaise is more closely connected to the almost universal abandonment of religious traditions and associated values in favor of non-introspective post-modern dehumanized consumption-driven technocratic secularism. (Forgive all the hyphens, I’m trying to summarize.)
Before Meiji and industrialization, the general population lived in very real fear of summary conscription and/or execution by the local daimyo. The neo-Shinto movement that went to war with such vicious zeal first bullied major Buddhist sects into adopting a nationalist identity and ceasing missionary activity. Shinto and Buddhist sects alike were largely discredited in the hearts and minds of the “follow your leaders” peasantry after the country’s crushing defeat in the war. There was a mass phenomenon of “emotional withdrawal” from religious practices of any kind concurrent with the post-war rebuilding and collective pursuit of prosperity.
I think many Japanese now believe there is no real meaning or higher purpose to life and cope by retreating into a simulcra of virtual reality and distracting consumer stimuli. And I posit similar post-modern behavior–resulting from different local factors–among the child-bearing non-immigrant citizens of the PIGS nations and the EU at large. Having lost the ability to “thank God” for everyday existence, perhaps societies lose the will to reproduce?
On the bright side, it seems the majority of Japanese have so far retained Confucian-influenced values of industry and a sense of shame.
Very interesting article and while I agree that Japan is heading toward a population “cliff” I think people should consider Japan is not alone in this regard. I’m fairly certain most developed countries around globe are seeing something similar in their own demographics. The US would be in the same condition if it were not for its immigration policies both legal and illegal. If there were a wider study completed, I bet it would show most developed and some developing countries (Iran included) where women have decided they are not interested in getting married or having children. (This is what you get when you abuse, neglect or mistreat the female populations of the world) That the world today is just too hard (war, famine, disease, economics, jobs, cultural degradation, etc) to support yourself, your parents/family members let alone having children of your own to support. Because as we all know these days marriage is not forever and the majority of the time women will end up of being the “only” caregiver for the family unit because their spouses (if their lucky) have been killed, died from something, left them, or is not an adequate income provider for the family. So really!? Why would any reasonably informed or educated woman willingly place herself in the position of having to support her family members and raise her children by herself knowing the odds are against her from the beginning!? Really!? Is that hard to figure out? Given a choice of working to support myself or relying on a partner who may or may not be there, what choice am I going to make!? I think it’s very obvious to most people… I’ll go it alone until I find someone I think has a higher probability of meeting my BASIC requirements for a partner let alone a PARENT. If I as a woman have to work as hard for an education and a career then my partner better be as hard working as I am or forget about it! If the government can’t figure out this simple truth then it needs more help than I as a single constituent can provide it! LOL!!
Japan produces an average of 14,000 adult movies per year. The U.S. produces 2,000. America has 2.5 times the population, approximately. That means, per capita, Japan produces more than 17 times the amount of porn than does America. Trust me, Japanese are plenty interested in sex. There are also many Soap/Bath Houses in Japan (more than America) and Japanese men buy sex at these places like we buy Motor Oil at Autozone.
Sorry for the duplicate post.
Many thanks for all of your comments, many of them useful and insightful.
Andrew Atkin – I very much agree with your analysis here of incorporating evolutionary thinking in with demography.
willmovetoojapansoon – Whilst it may be true to say that Japan produces more porn per capita than the US, from what I understand there is real division in the population between those who consume it. Whilst there is of course many Japanese with ‘normal’ (if that is the right word) libido, I believe there is a significant portion who show real disinterest in sex. A portion significant enough that the cumulative impact has encouraged the total population to fall.
It is necessary to understand that healthy lifestyle and staying away from stress would be helpful for maintaining sexual health as well.
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Compare this to Japan, a country where, according to a recent survey, a third of young men have no interest in sex. Moreover, 50% of young women are not dating. Could this be an ‘undersexualised’ society? Has this impacted Japan’s population geography? Business Cards
This would shorten the average amount of retirement years from 14 years to two for men, and from 19 years to seven for woman.how do i get more followers on twitter
Well, I think that the changed lifestyle, overburden of work, and too much of competition has resulted in change in the mindset and the youth have started felling lack of sexual urge. Anyway, rest of the things can be handled well by the doctors and naturalists.
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I am just concerned to know weather sexual inactivity really matters if a person is healthy otherwise?
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