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Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

314 points by Libertatea 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  Because it suggests that there is a market for a startup that disrupts lack of sex in Japan.
  - Cenk 13y ago
    RIPE FOR DISRUPTION!
  - telephonetemp 13y ago
    Alternatively, this might be a chance to persuade Japanese legislators to allow your human cloning startup there.
  - super-serial 13y ago
    PG says "do things that don't scale." At first "acquire users manually", then later you can automate the sexual process. I promise to apply these concepts when I go to Japan.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - cstross 13y ago
    Adds a whole new opportunity for "digital manipulation". (Sorry, I'll just get my coat ...)
  - networked 13y ago
    The Vice documentary linked upthread suggests that such a startup would be trying to disrupt existing Yakuza business. This is possibly not a good idea.
- UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
  Several reasons, people like sex and reading about sex. Learning about another culture and their problems is interesting. As the other poster said sounds like Japan might be a rich breeding ground for startups who try to address these issues.
- btown 13y ago
  HN isn't just for news about startups and tech, it's also about topics of interest to curious critical thinkers (which pretty much defines us, don't you think?). A little bit of /r/DepthHub here is a good thing.
  - vdaniuk 13y ago
    While the level of discourse on HN is high enough, it still suffers from the memes( as in their original definition) permeating through the content and diverting the attention to emotional, not rational issues. I for one find the emotional level on HN too high.
- recuter 13y ago
  Yes, nerds, sex, nothing to see here move along. Fine, if this part bothers you, how about we tackle the actual subject from another angle: http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/staring-into-the-ukrainian-economic-and-political-abyss/ http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/staring-into-the-ukrainian-ec... Population decline is multifaceted and rather important - countries that experience it don't seem to bounce back, and it has far reaching economic implications.
smegel 13y ago
Ah, the sordid British fascination with sex in East Asia raises its head again...
- UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
  Did you read the article? Japan seems like it will have some serious social ramifications of this in the upcoming years. That's worthy of discussion.
  - smegel 13y ago
    Yes, but you can talk about demographic trends without delving into fetishism and sexualization. As strange as it sounds, there isn't much relation between sex and the choice to have children, from my understanding Japanese women are rejecting motherhood because it cancels whatever limited career opportunities they may have had. In other words, like most demographic trends, it is driven by economics. Of course to a sexually repressed Brit walking through Shibuya with a childish smirk and a hard-on surrounded by sexually voracious vixens (in his mind at least), sex is everywhere and needs to at least be a sub theme on any reporting on Japan. Cringeworthy.
    - jpatokal 13y ago
      While I don't disagree with you that economics and the plight of the working woman in Japan is a major cause of the dismal birth rate, there's definitely more to it than just that. In particular, the "herbivore man" phenomenon is definitely A Thing in Japan, and the WP article claims that anywhere between 36% and 71% (!) of Japanese men under 30 now self-identify as herbivores: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_men Can you imagine a survey in any Western country where even 36% of young men would willingly fess up to voluntarily avoiding any romantic relationships? (And FWIW, I'm married to a Japanese woman, and our contribution to the birth rate is already above the national average.)
      - VLM 13y ago
        "turn their backs on typical "masculine" and corporate roles" So they're basically hippies, although for cultural reasons the girls don't think their hippies are cool, so they get less sex not more. One interesting effect of huge rates of freeters and neets is some segment of the salarymen feel they're just one bad review or whatever from permanent downgrade into freeter / neet status, or at least the girls may think that about them. So the percentage of people behaving like freeters / neets probably is somewhat larger than the demographic percentage of freeter/neets. Well, no girl my age would ever have anything to do with me because I'm poor and have no future, so, uh, yeah I'm not looking thats the story I'll tell so I feel a little better. Pout and quit is hardly unknown in the west "Oh so you guys are cheating and stacking the game against me, well F you I'm taking my (two) balls and going home". Although with the decline of casual neighborhood play this might be an unknown social situation for our young... In the past it was not unheard of, screw over the kid who brought the tennis ball and he takes it and goes home and no one plays... Don't end up like a teen parent, don't have relationships and kids until you can afford it... well, what if the economic deck is stacked such that 25% will never, ever be able to afford it? Well, until the inevitable revolution, you'll get weird things like young people not having sex. Finally the whole topic is super hetro-normative so I think we can all safely assume at least 5% or so are in the closet. So 5% in closet, in 2000, in better times, 10% were NEETs per govt figures, in better times 30% were freeters (some of whom do get some...) maybe 10% of salarymen (or more precisely, the girls checking them out) accurately or inaccurately believe they're one unlucky event away from permanent downgrade into freeter/neet (is there significant upward mobility in Japan from freeter/neet? Not that I've read/heard?) So that's 55% right there although some of the freeters ARE probably getting some. Of course not everyone reacts to being screwed over by withdrawing; in the US they sometimes go out shooting, etc. Fixing the withdrawl problem without fixing the economic stressors is likely just to result in different negative social reactions WRT weapons etc.
seivan 13y ago
There was a really cool (aren't they usually?) Vice documentary about all the intimacy substitutes available for people in Japan. Easy to google up.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  Here's the link http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-love-industry http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-lo...
- fidotron 13y ago
  And specifically about the host club phenomenon, but surprising in other ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Happiness_Space%3A_Tale_of_an_Osaka_Love_Thief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Happiness_Space%3A_T...
- dthunt 13y ago
  I would note that there is a particular fascination with Japan and sex, and that google is unlikely to give you an accurate depiction at the frequency of weird in Japan. I suspect that weird exists in any population of sufficient size.
camus2 13y ago
Who is buying all these JAV videos that make US gonzo look like Disney cartoons ? too much of it is definetly not good for the mind, especially those about v...t or o...p.....s
- networked 13y ago
  I don't know what "v...t" or "o...p.....s" means but consider that you might be confusing the cause and effect here: assuming that there's correlation between consuming $WEIRD_PORN and being unable to have normal relationships [1] it may not be that people become unable to have those relationships due to exposure to $WEIRD_PORN so much as that people who turn to $WEIRD_PORN were already unable to have them. This creates demand and $WEIRD_PORN gets produced. [1] "Normal" a defined by a given society. Edit: removed a comparison of the parent poster's argument to "violent video games make people violent".
  - camus2 13y ago
    My point is about porn in general. I'm from a generation that did not have access to porn easily. today some 12 yo kids are already addicted to porn,and not the softcore stuff. There will be huge consequences. I dont think i'm confused about causality here. If you cant get excited unless you see or do extreme stuff, you're going to have a pretty difficult libido,as in reality not that many women are willing to "perfom" these "stunts". I dont think one needs to be already interested in extreme fetish in order to get hooked to it,the more one looks at porn the more one seeks extreme stuffs. It's like any other addiction. > I don't know what "v...t" or "o...p.....s" Nevermind , i was saying that japanese porn is well known for its extreme fetish.
    - networked 13y ago
      >I dont think one needs to be already interested in extreme fetish in order to get hooked to it,the more one looks at porn the more one seeks extreme stuffs. It's like any other addiction. I agree, but my point was that people who see enough porn to get to the really weird stuff are probably more likely the ones who didn't care for real-life relationships already (in a society where these two things a correlated). Edit: clarity.
usernew1817 13y ago
http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-love-industry http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-lo...
m_mueller 13y ago
The subject is interesting, especially because I'm married to a Japanese - but man do I hate articles that go round and round like this one. Here, have a little bit of a sociological hypothesis - but let's not go too deep for your little brains shall we? Here, have a little bit of anecdotal evidence instead. Enough of that? Alright, let's start over again. [...] Oh I'm outa time, let's end the article now, kthxbye. It's probably too much to ask - but I think there should be something in between a scientific journal and common journalism. In technology we have some pretty insightful articles coming up in blogs now and then, articles where sources are cited and you can go deeper on any subject if you like. Why can't traditional journalists not use the web the way it is meant to?
- usernew1817 13y ago
  why does saying "married to a Japanese" sound so much more awkward then saying "married to an American/Canadian"
  - m_mueller 13y ago
    well it doesn't to me - but maybe that's because I'm not American? Why does it sound weird to you?
    - tux1968 13y ago
      It really does sound strange to me as well, almost derogatory in tone. It sounds so much better to my ear to say "i'm married to a Japanese person" or "... person from Japan". But I have no good reason as to why the same doesn't hold for Canadian/American.
      - m_mueller 13y ago
        Thanks, I think I'll have to keep that in mind when talking in English. The thing is, I thought about writing 'Japanese woman', but her gender seemed besides the point to me, so I didn't want to mention it. In my native tongue (German) there is no unisex term for nationalities, you're either a "Japanerin" (= Japanese woman) or a "Japaner" (= Japanese man). Because of that there might be less subtext when talking about nationalities, but I think this is all just due to the history of your cultural relations - for example in Switzerland there is some negative subtext to the word 'Yugoslave', because their immigrant group was rather unpopular at one point.
raverbashing 13y ago
In the midst of all, this seems to be one of the best parts of it: "Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me." Great, so if a woman marries she loses independence and her own income, and then people don't know why women don't want to marry? Same thing here: "Romantic commitment seems to represent burden and drudgery, from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan to the uncertain expectations of a spouse and in-laws"
- intelliot 13y ago
  Notably, it appears that prior generations had higher birthrates because women were not expected to participate in the workforce. They didn't want to and/or weren't allowed to. They were treated differently than men. A potential downside of making women equal to men is that they become more similar. They don't need each other. They don't complement each other anymore. Opposites attract, but if women are expected to succeed in the same way as men, then the prior balance is lost.
  - randomafrican 13y ago
    It's more an imbalance between social expectations and modern living. More conservative societies see a steeper decline in birthrate as women participation in the workforce increases. That's why France has one of the highest birthrate in Europe for instance.
    - novalis78 13y ago
      I disagree, I think the opposite is the case. American Caucasians have a higher fertility rate than almost all Western Europeans; birth rates in France typically include recent immigrant fertility rates which are significantly higher. The arguments to avoid children are similar to the Japanese: independence, more money for consumption, etc Disclaimer: I grew up in Germany/Austria and find the topic of Europeqn demographics quite intriguing
netcan 13y ago
There is something about Japan that really brings home the meaning of 'foreign' to me. I think that being the first rich, advanced large country that isn't western is the reason. On paper, they have a similar relationship with money, technology, their religion and traditional culture. I can't explain the strangeness away with those differences. When I read something like this about some trend or supposed cultural pathology cropping up, I have nothing to connect it to. I don't intuitively get where its coming from or why. Not even a hint. I don't know whether to dismiss it as conservatives concerned with something harmless, some fringe phenomenon or whatever.
- DasIch 13y ago
  Actually this phenomenon isn't that foreign. Less children being born, a falling number of "serious" relationships etc. are all things that can be observed in any technologically advanced society. Japan is just an extreme case because their current set of values doesn't deviate as much from more traditional values, which escalates the problem. Germany is actually somewhat similiar to Japan when it comes to these issues and while the results are by far not as extreme the reasons are very similar: lack of government support for modern types of families and traditional values that still have a strong impact on how children are supposed to be raised.
  - _random_ 13y ago
    Unless you make your country wide-open to all sorts of immigrants. Than your birth-rate will be "OK".
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    None of my childres/nieces/nephews are married or have childred. They are all approaching their 30s. Something is going on. In a previous generation ALL would be married, ALL would have at least one child.
emiliobumachar 13y ago
Is there hard evidence that this is bad? Resource depletion is among the highest risks to civilization. Seems straightforward that severe population decline should be desired, and voluntary refraining from reproduction should be welcome. (Please don't just extrapolate the trend till extinction. See http://xkcd.com/605/ http://xkcd.com/605/. )
- intelliot 13y ago
  Is there convincing evidence that resource depletion is among the highest risks to civilization? Much of what I've seen shows the opposite: for example, China is a rising superpower largely because of their huge population. Having more people means more potential productivity, and that could lead to more prosperity. On the other hand, small countries with few people are usually able to accomplish little. Places with few inhabitants are considered rural and have a lower standard of living than places with high extremely high population density, like cities.
  - emiliobumachar 13y ago
    I'm counting war over the increasingly scarce resources as part of the risk, so the current influence of mildly scarce resources over politics is evidence. I agree with your point that, from a nationalist perspective, population size is basically nation size.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      Wars aren't generally fought over resources these days.
      - willvarfar 13y ago
        As an armchair student, I'd judge most wars to be about resources. We must differ in definition of resources. Which recent wars are not about resources, do you think?
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Because parents and schools in the developed world have stopped raising kids and have instead opted for 18+ years of babysitting. Part of the problem is that we don't even know what we're about anymore, so we don't know what lessons and principles to pass on to our children. It's a wonder that the problem isn't far worse than it is already.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  One of the major things I see though in the article is the way in which modern corporate capitalism isolates individuals and tries to place career above family.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    You mean how individual people choose to place career above family? Don't see how modern corporate capitalism is doing that.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      Having lived in some other countries, I disagree. This corresponds with corporate domination of the economy. Where small businesses dominate, family becomes more important. The reason is that family becomes the primary source of small business capital.
      - einhverfr 13y ago
        (The family also becomes the source of one's "career" as well. It isn't that women don't participate in family businesses. They do, extensively. It's that family and work time are no longer separated by a wall.)
veidr 13y ago
This is a stupid article, and young people in Japan have not stopped having sex. What westerners might call 'casual sex' -- sex without the framework of a relationships that implies various other promieses/committments -- is normal, and also not likely to be spoken about frankly, especially to a reporter, and much less a British one. Sometimes I'll witness a young woman asked about it at a social gathering (as people have a few drinks and speak more freely). "I don't have anybody... I can't remember the last time I slept with somebody," she might say. What she means is that she doesn't have a steady boyfriend, and thus it is certainly none of your business who she's fucking. Or I will see a guy asked about it. "Well, romance is too complicated with all I've got going on... I've learned to live without it," he might say, with just the right amount of sheepishness. What he means is that he is seeking only sex that doesn't come with implied commitments and hassle. These two people might very well end up leaving together.
- westicle 13y ago
  This certainly isn't a phenomenon exclusive to Japan either. I know plenty of western young people who have no interest in marriage, procreation or families. Maybe they're more interested in their work. Maybe they're more interested in rock-climbing. Maybe they're more interested in Pokemon. More power to them, I say.
  - jrs99 13y ago
    I think it's a bigger more existential problem that young people these days have.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Maybe they have too many electronic substitutes. There's nothing in the human makeup that says "will procreate even in the presence of unlimited sexual gratification elsewhere". Its certainly something to be studied and understood.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    Anecdotally, this is directly correlated to the price of real-estate, and other parts of the world are only now catching up to Japan in this regards.
ceautery 13y ago
I loved the picture of the couple leaning away from each other; I think I was supposed to see that as an indicator of the purported epidemic. I think what the article was, however, was an advertisement for the former dominatrix. Apparently you can pay her to talk to you about women, pay her more to get naked while she talks about women, and maybe if you play your cards right...
- jpatokal 13y ago
  Generously assuming your comment is merely clueless instead of intentionally offensive, that sort of subtlety would hardly be necessary, as finding commercial sex in Tokyo is trivial. Most larger train station have red-light districts in the immediate vicinity, with (Japanese-only) signage making it extremely clear what's available.
  - ceautery 13y ago
    I have no interest in what's available in Tokyo, only in how Abigail got that mess of an article taken seriously. You have bold claims regarding my understanding and intent to offend. Elaborate.
    - dthunt 13y ago
      I have literally been propositioned on the street between Shibuya and Ikejiri. Places I would not have expected it. I can't speak to signage, as I generally steer clear of areas that seem shady, and I wouldn't put a lot of trust into such things anyway. Regarding the source of much of the information in this article, I have little to offer. If you were to weigh the hypothesis that the source was advertising services against the hypothesis that this came up in conversation with the article author and she found this worth noting, which do you think is more likely, given that this is interesting information that is unlikely to be left out of a sex-charged article? In this case, being charitable about the parties involved in this article is probably correct.
unsignedint 13y ago
Few things I'm reading from Japanese people (albeit, I won't say this is unbiased observation) often cite unrealistic expectations of their partner's income, look, and personality. So, I've looked into the government research about it, at least for income part as it is being tangible. [1] As for income, there have been some research that lifetime unmarried rate would collaborate with income. (Mostly for male) [2] Their research further says that "In 2010, for male percentage of marriage for permanent employee is 27.7% while same for temp workers are 6.7%, resulting in about 20% of difference, while for female it is 28.2% for permanent workers, and 25.8% for temp workers, shows the much less difference. Therefore the increased rate of male temp workers is contributing to unmarriage rate or marriage at an older age. [3] [1] http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/index.html http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/index.htm.... [2] http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/image/n1020790.gif http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/image/n10... [3] http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/html/n1221000.html http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/html/n122...
- Crake 13y ago
  I think I remember a study a while back that found that women expect their future husband(s) to make more than them, even though women make equal to men or more in my country. Naturally, this makes "good men" (according to this rather sexist definition of suitability) hard if not impossible to find. Women have been liberated from a lot of their gender roles, but seem fine with keeping men in theirs.
squirejons 13y ago
ever notice how the corporate media is always trying get more people into the developed nations? Mass immigration! More people! More People! More Babies! MOAR! MOAR! This baby dearth, combined with the ability of the japanese to keep their elites from increasing mass immigration, means less supply of labor, which means higher wage (remember supply and demand? It applies to labor, too). That means that the corporations that support the corporate media via advertising buys will pay more for labor. The media hates that! Also, fewer people means fewer consumers for the products advertised in the media. The media hates that! The media is the enemy of the majority working class citizen of the developed nations.
- randomdata 13y ago
  I cannot speak for all developed nations, but I always got the impression that the corporate media in America was very anti-children. Many shows highlight the trials and tribulations of having children. I cannot think of any popular program that focuses on the joys of having children.
- pcurve 13y ago
  Japan hasn't quite embraced foreign immigration the way many of its European counterparts have. It's an interesting demographic and economics experiments whose results we shall find out in coming 30-50 years. I'm willing to bet a lot of money that the low-birth rate trend will reverse at some point. A country with 1.2 birth rate will cease to exist in 200 years, and I just don't see that happening. More interesting questions to ask is: 1. What will trigger the trend reversal, and make young people reproduce more? (My guess is, vast reduction in standard of living and GDP) 2. And how long will it take for Japan to recover from the damage sustained? In a long run, I think Japan can pull it off. It will be in better shape than Europe 50 years from now.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  This doesn't work for Japan so well right now: lost generation, 10s of percents of temp jobs with bad pay...
- kzrdude 13y ago
  Did you notice that the current system is built upon growth? Growth in everything, in populations, users, consumers, prices, resource extraction etc etc
alinajaf 13y ago
Very interesting article, multiple points to make: If living and being in Japan has taught me anything, it's that generalising from anecdote is not a good idea. Case in point, if you visit an outlet mall a few miles outside of central Sendai on a weekend, you'd have a lot of trouble convincing anyone that Japanese people aren't making enough babies. It was very, very difficult to spot single people, or even couples without babies crawling all over them on our one day out there. In a population of nearly 130 million, if there's any generalisation you want to make about Japanese people, you'll find enough anecdotes to put together into a convincing article. On the usage of mendokusai, I think the author of the article may have misunderstood in the situation he's describing. I believe that in this situation mendokusai meant "It's tiresome to be constantly propositioned by male colleagues at work" rather than "I would have sex with everyone, but I can't be bothered". IME you use mendokusai whenever you're tired of something, along with describing a task that is tiresome.
- pcurve 13y ago
  I agree generalizing is not a good idea, but a single person wouldn't necessarily hang out at an outlet mall by himself either. (or spend a lot of time outside for that matter)
- rhytha 13y ago
  afaik, mendokusai = messy. But Japanese language is context base, so you can use same words for multiple situations.
  - alinajaf 13y ago
    From jisho.org[1]: 面倒くさい - bother(some) to do; tiresome Also the word 面倒 translates to trouble, difficulty; care; attention;, so that with +くさい would make it troublesome. I've not heard it being used for messy, unless perhaps you mean messy as in a messy situation (rather than say, a messy room). [1]: http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E9%9D%A2%E5%80%92%E3%81%8F%E3%81%95%E3%81%84&eng=&dict=edict http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E9%9D%A2%E5%80%92%E3%81%8F%E3%81...
nkhodyunya 13y ago
Sex nowadays became a redundant, obsolete, risky, overcomplicated act which you can totally avoid with the help of good porn. So why bother with searching partner, if you can have all of sex benefits alone, but with porn or good imagination.
- gradsolos 13y ago
  This. With the amazing variety and quantity of high-quality porn nowadays, it never ceases to amaze me the great efforts people are willing to undergo for the possibility of sex. When I ask, most people admit they don't really like that place or feel like doing that, they do it only to increase their prospects of having casual sex. C'mon, it's the 21st century!
- philwelch 13y ago
  Are you a solipsist or just a virgin?
  - nkhodyunya 13y ago
    Neither. I've tried casual sex when I was young, 5 or 7 times before realized it's totally overrated overhyped trash.
    - philwelch 13y ago
      Have you tried non-casual sex? The whole point of sex is to make an intimate connection with another person; I'll agree it's kind of pointless without that. But then again so is porn. Hence the original question: it's a very solipsistic attitude that porn is an adequate replacement for sex.
      - nkhodyunya 13y ago
        Yeah, i believe putting my dick into someone else pussy would make us "strongly connected" for at least some time, but I don't agree that the whole point of sex is intimate connection. I believe that the point is to make children. Or (as for me) to make orgasm.
jimgardener 13y ago
Not all people in India have premarital sex.In cities it may be different.But in rural areas very few does.This is not something people discuss with a journalist.I know many young men belonging to Christian communities who consider sex outside of marriage as a bad thing.
sexjpfr 13y ago
For those of you that know french. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PRPnG_se_o&hd=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PRPnG_se_o&hd=1
tokenadult 13y ago
This article would be a lot more informative if it looked at some other countries for comparison and contrast. Other countries that have been in the news for a high age of first marriage and a very low birthrate are Italy and Taiwan. What is similar about those countries, and what is different about them, alongside Japan? I have read that Taiwan (where I have lived during two different three-year periods of foreign residence and work) has the highest age of first marriage, and one of the lowest birthrates, of any country in the world. But Taiwan's culture is distinct from that of Japan, and some of the relevant workplace conditions and government policies are a bit different too. So what is the causation here?
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  The internet? Infinite sexual gratification is a new phenomenon. Does it correlate with this societal statistic?
- speeder 13y ago
  This also happened to late roman empire, just before their collapse. I know you like links, but I am busy now and cannot re-find them... But basically, any country that is prosperous enough to women work in equal terms to men in a safe environment (ie: police exists and army is strong), ends having women rights movements, a acceptance of homosexuals, and a sharp rise in individualism. Then a mix of this happen (usually all of it, and it DID happened in Rome): no-fault divorce (prompting huge amount of women-initiated divorces, and then men stopping marriages) babysitters and daycare (because women are not home to take care of children) great numbers of women that prefer their careers over marriage great numbers of men men that prefer goofing around instead of having responsability over a household. All this usually results in decline of births, and debt problems as countries start to debase their currency in a attempt to keep the same standard of living for the old while there is not enough young people (this is much worse in countries with military all over the globe, like Rome) Then you start having governments defaulting on obligations to pay police and army, undoing the conditions that allowed the equality, then your country either drift back to a previous condition, or if it was big enough and streched far enough, it collapses (like Rome did, as your defaulted police and army, immigrants covering for lack of native young people, and lack of native young people to defend their native land, makes your country a sitting duck for anyone that want to bring it down)
nhangen 13y ago
Who needs it when, for an extra fee, your 'therapist' will get naked and give you a tour of the female body. Talk about blurred lines.
n1ghtm4n 13y ago
Why has no one brought up overcrowding in Japan? You don't think that's going to affect the birth rate? http://inventorspot.com/articles/six_startling_scenes_overcrowded_6802 http://inventorspot.com/articles/six_startling_scenes_overcr...
- kalleboo 13y ago
  Meanwhile the Japanese countryside is depopulating at an amazing rate, leaving ghost towns in their wake, with elementary schools built for 700 students housing 2.
  - n1ghtm4n 13y ago
    That's not necessarily a bad thing! People move to cities to find a better life, and they usually find it. That's great unless you think a life of rural poverty is some kind of noble virtue. The global population is 7.1 billion and rising fast. We should all cheer when we hear these statistics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization#Environmental_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization#Environmental_eff...
njharman 13y ago
"I can't be bothered." Sums up my feelings pretty much exactly. I lack much, if any parental instincts. I also lack any family or peer pressure to marry and make babies. Without the push to produce offspring relationships have more downsides than up. Children 10 times as so. I enjoy relationships (well most of them). But, there is so much to do and experience in the world. I'll never get to all before I die. There's no reason to spend my time in sub-optimal pursuits.
philwelch 13y ago
I can't help but read these stories and think, "well I guess that's what a dying culture looks like".
graycat 13y ago
Okay, take a town 60 years ago. Lots of people, say, o driving cars with tires that last only 15,000 miles, o driving cars with engines that last only 80,000 miles (due to poor lubrication due to water and gasoline in the oil due to inaccurate fuel mixture and ignition), o typing on typewriters with carbon paper, o doing business communications with printing and/or typing on paper sent by USPS, o an office telephone switchboard manned by employees. Now enter new technology, and each of these activities uses some automation, is much cheaper, and puts the old employees out of work. So, have lots of unemployed people with little or no money who want to make money and consume but cannot get jobs. Why not jobs? For one, the total number of jobs shrank, and as in musical chairs some people don't get one. For another, to create more jobs need some ideas for new products/services, some capital to get the businesses going, and some qualified employees. The unemployed people will need some new training, that is, investments in 'human capital'. As we know from depressions, can have a shortage of capital, lots of people not consuming who want to work but no jobs for them to do. Then if have a war, suddenly can have three jobs for everyone who can work at all. There is also an effect of the ratios of people to land and other natural resources. With high density population, the prices of such resources increase. Maybe when the population of Japan, Finland, France, Germany, Russia, the US, etc. shrink, the new ratio will make it easier for a couple to form a family. E.g., if the population is low enough that a young couple can easily buy 200 acres of good farm land, then there will be some new alternatives for that couple to form a family. Now at maybe $5000 an acre, let's, see, 200 acres would be $1 million. She's 18; he's 22; and where are they going to get $1 million or even a down payment plus farm equipment and materials for a house? Presumably in time startups will find new products and services that people want and that can make use of the unemployed. But, in that town when automation put the typists out of work, the jobs of some people were not affected and, first cut, by having the company spend much less on typing, could pay their remaining employees more. So, some people are doing well. And in Japan, the article seems to suggest that real estate prices are so high that no one can afford them! No! Instead, real estate prices are so high just because enough people actually can afford them. So, some people are doing well, and maybe they, or their lucky heirs, are forming traditional families.
graycat 13y ago
The Japanese in the article are missing out on what man/woman love can really mean and the value it can have. So there should be not just 'friction' but 'love' (with the help that Mother Nature provides) with commitment, caring, affection, intimacy, passion, joining of lives, vows, romance, trust (he doesn't return from a business trip and discover that she's drained the checkbook and savings account, took the best of the household belongings and the dog, and is gone), respect, responsiveness (they respond to each other), supportive families (e.g., he gets a job in her father's business), collection of activities, memories, and traditions like, don't want to lose, can't get anywhere else, and that cause 'lock in', homes ("where the heart is, where you are loved even when you are wrong"), and children ("the most rewarding thing we did"). Joining? For a few hundred years in Western Civilization, standard marriage vows started off with "We gather together to join this man and this women with the bonds of holy matrimony.", and there is wisdom there. Or, for a more direct explanation, she has two legs. He has two legs. If she breaks a leg, then she is down to one leg to help her broken leg get well. But joined with him with good vows, commitment, etc. they have four legs with three good legs to help her broken leg get well. The three legs are three times better than just the one. Can rattle off 10,000 such cases faster than can say them. People don't want to be alone. Being alone is scary. Nearly all baby mammals know this. Being joined to someone is much more secure. This can be great stuff, some of the best in life, even without children, and one night stands are nothing like the same. The article omitted nearly all the really good stuff.
analog31 13y ago
There's an analogous effect that's reportedly been around for a long time, possibly worldwide: An anti-correlation between birth rates and things like the education and economic empowerment of women. In addition, even the US has seen a decline in birth rates resulting from economic stagnation. Is Japan an exception, or merely an extreme case due to the tenacity of workplace sex discrimination?
UUMMUU 13y ago
I like it how they're trying to "fix" the population decline. A population decline might actually be a good thing for our species. There are too many people and an ever increasing sense of stupidity
- victorhooi 13y ago
  Well, yes, until you actually think it through, and realise that this also means your population is aging... Basically, you have a bunch of old people around, and nobody to support them, or fuel the society. And after a certain point, you can't reverse it, and you no longer have a viable society.
alkonaut 13y ago
The problem isn't so much the sex is it? The problem is of course demographic. Related, but not the same. Amazingly the government of Japan surely understands the problem at hand, and still refuses to act. Labour laws of course cannot allow an employer to fire someone (or choose not to hire) based on pregnancy (or being a woman of that age). There is only one sure way of making women as desirable to hire in this respect: ensure men stay at home with children just as much as women. State subsidized childcare and a year or two of paid maternal/paternal leave per child would be a net win for Japan (as it is for most such countries).
nctorn 13y ago
I see this trend in other industrialized countries, like in western Europe. I believe probably a very important cause of this demographic imbalance is the equality factor. Women work same as men, earn same as men and feel empowered. This is great for the individual, but then the society as a whole remains out of equilibrium. For some reason being independent (able to buy what I want, when I want it and work 20 hours a day) is better than rising a family and having children. Things that are after all, the reason of what as species, are suppose to be doing in this planet. The signal is then clear, you fail to do that, but being to extinct. This is exactly what begins where this trends are prevalent. Perhaps we need to rethink the roles and if being independent is something that in the long term will create more value for the group.
Futurebot 13y ago
When we talk about the medium or long term, we should also start to consider the impact of life-extension, and more importantly, youth preservation technologies; the entire issue of "young supporting the old" disppears if people stop aging. There is virtually no government support for research to support this, even though we should consider it one of the most important issues in history (and many diseases simply a subset of the "disease" of aging.) Perhaps trends like the ones discussed in the article will get governments thinking about it (and having Google investing in this area is a nice boost.)
21echoes 13y ago
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/10/23/are_japanese_people_really_having_less_sex_than_anyone_else.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/10/23/are_japanes...

314 points by Libertatea 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

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adamnemecek 13y ago
Because it suggests that there is a market for a startup that disrupts lack of sex in Japan.
- Cenk 13y ago
  RIPE FOR DISRUPTION!
- telephonetemp 13y ago
  Alternatively, this might be a chance to persuade Japanese legislators to allow your human cloning startup there.
- super-serial 13y ago
  PG says "do things that don't scale." At first "acquire users manually", then later you can automate the sexual process. I promise to apply these concepts when I go to Japan.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- cstross 13y ago
  Adds a whole new opportunity for "digital manipulation". (Sorry, I'll just get my coat ...)
- networked 13y ago
  The Vice documentary linked upthread suggests that such a startup would be trying to disrupt existing Yakuza business. This is possibly not a good idea.
UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
Several reasons, people like sex and reading about sex. Learning about another culture and their problems is interesting. As the other poster said sounds like Japan might be a rich breeding ground for startups who try to address these issues.
btown 13y ago
HN isn't just for news about startups and tech, it's also about topics of interest to curious critical thinkers (which pretty much defines us, don't you think?). A little bit of /r/DepthHub here is a good thing.
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  While the level of discourse on HN is high enough, it still suffers from the memes( as in their original definition) permeating through the content and diverting the attention to emotional, not rational issues. I for one find the emotional level on HN too high.
recuter 13y ago
Yes, nerds, sex, nothing to see here move along. Fine, if this part bothers you, how about we tackle the actual subject from another angle: http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/staring-into-the-ukrainian-economic-and-political-abyss/ http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/staring-into-the-ukrainian-ec... Population decline is multifaceted and rather important - countries that experience it don't seem to bounce back, and it has far reaching economic implications.

smegel 13y ago

Ah, the sordid British fascination with sex in East Asia raises its head again...

UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
Did you read the article? Japan seems like it will have some serious social ramifications of this in the upcoming years. That's worthy of discussion.
- smegel 13y ago
  Yes, but you can talk about demographic trends without delving into fetishism and sexualization. As strange as it sounds, there isn't much relation between sex and the choice to have children, from my understanding Japanese women are rejecting motherhood because it cancels whatever limited career opportunities they may have had. In other words, like most demographic trends, it is driven by economics. Of course to a sexually repressed Brit walking through Shibuya with a childish smirk and a hard-on surrounded by sexually voracious vixens (in his mind at least), sex is everywhere and needs to at least be a sub theme on any reporting on Japan. Cringeworthy.
  - jpatokal 13y ago
    While I don't disagree with you that economics and the plight of the working woman in Japan is a major cause of the dismal birth rate, there's definitely more to it than just that. In particular, the "herbivore man" phenomenon is definitely A Thing in Japan, and the WP article claims that anywhere between 36% and 71% (!) of Japanese men under 30 now self-identify as herbivores: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_men Can you imagine a survey in any Western country where even 36% of young men would willingly fess up to voluntarily avoiding any romantic relationships? (And FWIW, I'm married to a Japanese woman, and our contribution to the birth rate is already above the national average.)
    - VLM 13y ago
      "turn their backs on typical "masculine" and corporate roles" So they're basically hippies, although for cultural reasons the girls don't think their hippies are cool, so they get less sex not more. One interesting effect of huge rates of freeters and neets is some segment of the salarymen feel they're just one bad review or whatever from permanent downgrade into freeter / neet status, or at least the girls may think that about them. So the percentage of people behaving like freeters / neets probably is somewhat larger than the demographic percentage of freeter/neets. Well, no girl my age would ever have anything to do with me because I'm poor and have no future, so, uh, yeah I'm not looking thats the story I'll tell so I feel a little better. Pout and quit is hardly unknown in the west "Oh so you guys are cheating and stacking the game against me, well F you I'm taking my (two) balls and going home". Although with the decline of casual neighborhood play this might be an unknown social situation for our young... In the past it was not unheard of, screw over the kid who brought the tennis ball and he takes it and goes home and no one plays... Don't end up like a teen parent, don't have relationships and kids until you can afford it... well, what if the economic deck is stacked such that 25% will never, ever be able to afford it? Well, until the inevitable revolution, you'll get weird things like young people not having sex. Finally the whole topic is super hetro-normative so I think we can all safely assume at least 5% or so are in the closet. So 5% in closet, in 2000, in better times, 10% were NEETs per govt figures, in better times 30% were freeters (some of whom do get some...) maybe 10% of salarymen (or more precisely, the girls checking them out) accurately or inaccurately believe they're one unlucky event away from permanent downgrade into freeter/neet (is there significant upward mobility in Japan from freeter/neet? Not that I've read/heard?) So that's 55% right there although some of the freeters ARE probably getting some. Of course not everyone reacts to being screwed over by withdrawing; in the US they sometimes go out shooting, etc. Fixing the withdrawl problem without fixing the economic stressors is likely just to result in different negative social reactions WRT weapons etc.

seivan 13y ago

There was a really cool (aren't they usually?) Vice documentary about all the intimacy substitutes available for people in Japan. Easy to google up.

k-mcgrady 13y ago
Here's the link http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-love-industry http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-lo...
fidotron 13y ago
And specifically about the host club phenomenon, but surprising in other ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Happiness_Space%3A_Tale_of_an_Osaka_Love_Thief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Happiness_Space%3A_T...
dthunt 13y ago
I would note that there is a particular fascination with Japan and sex, and that google is unlikely to give you an accurate depiction at the frequency of weird in Japan. I suspect that weird exists in any population of sufficient size.

camus2 13y ago

Who is buying all these JAV videos that make US gonzo look like Disney cartoons ? too much of it is definetly not good for the mind, especially those about v...t or o...p.....s

networked 13y ago
I don't know what "v...t" or "o...p.....s" means but consider that you might be confusing the cause and effect here: assuming that there's correlation between consuming $WEIRD_PORN and being unable to have normal relationships [1] it may not be that people become unable to have those relationships due to exposure to $WEIRD_PORN so much as that people who turn to $WEIRD_PORN were already unable to have them. This creates demand and $WEIRD_PORN gets produced. [1] "Normal" a defined by a given society. Edit: removed a comparison of the parent poster's argument to "violent video games make people violent".
- camus2 13y ago
  My point is about porn in general. I'm from a generation that did not have access to porn easily. today some 12 yo kids are already addicted to porn,and not the softcore stuff. There will be huge consequences. I dont think i'm confused about causality here. If you cant get excited unless you see or do extreme stuff, you're going to have a pretty difficult libido,as in reality not that many women are willing to "perfom" these "stunts". I dont think one needs to be already interested in extreme fetish in order to get hooked to it,the more one looks at porn the more one seeks extreme stuffs. It's like any other addiction. > I don't know what "v...t" or "o...p.....s" Nevermind , i was saying that japanese porn is well known for its extreme fetish.
  - networked 13y ago
    >I dont think one needs to be already interested in extreme fetish in order to get hooked to it,the more one looks at porn the more one seeks extreme stuffs. It's like any other addiction. I agree, but my point was that people who see enough porn to get to the really weird stuff are probably more likely the ones who didn't care for real-life relationships already (in a society where these two things a correlated). Edit: clarity.

usernew1817 13y ago

http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-love-industry http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-lo...

m_mueller 13y ago

The subject is interesting, especially because I'm married to a Japanese - but man do I hate articles that go round and round like this one. Here, have a little bit of a sociological hypothesis - but let's not go too deep for your little brains shall we? Here, have a little bit of anecdotal evidence instead. Enough of that? Alright, let's start over again. [...] Oh I'm outa time, let's end the article now, kthxbye. It's probably too much to ask - but I think there should be something in between a scientific journal and common journalism. In technology we have some pretty insightful articles coming up in blogs now and then, articles where sources are cited and you can go deeper on any subject if you like. Why can't traditional journalists not use the web the way it is meant to?

usernew1817 13y ago
why does saying "married to a Japanese" sound so much more awkward then saying "married to an American/Canadian"
- m_mueller 13y ago
  well it doesn't to me - but maybe that's because I'm not American? Why does it sound weird to you?
  - tux1968 13y ago
    It really does sound strange to me as well, almost derogatory in tone. It sounds so much better to my ear to say "i'm married to a Japanese person" or "... person from Japan". But I have no good reason as to why the same doesn't hold for Canadian/American.
    - m_mueller 13y ago
      Thanks, I think I'll have to keep that in mind when talking in English. The thing is, I thought about writing 'Japanese woman', but her gender seemed besides the point to me, so I didn't want to mention it. In my native tongue (German) there is no unisex term for nationalities, you're either a "Japanerin" (= Japanese woman) or a "Japaner" (= Japanese man). Because of that there might be less subtext when talking about nationalities, but I think this is all just due to the history of your cultural relations - for example in Switzerland there is some negative subtext to the word 'Yugoslave', because their immigrant group was rather unpopular at one point.

raverbashing 13y ago

In the midst of all, this seems to be one of the best parts of it: "Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me." Great, so if a woman marries she loses independence and her own income, and then people don't know why women don't want to marry? Same thing here: "Romantic commitment seems to represent burden and drudgery, from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan to the uncertain expectations of a spouse and in-laws"

intelliot 13y ago
Notably, it appears that prior generations had higher birthrates because women were not expected to participate in the workforce. They didn't want to and/or weren't allowed to. They were treated differently than men. A potential downside of making women equal to men is that they become more similar. They don't need each other. They don't complement each other anymore. Opposites attract, but if women are expected to succeed in the same way as men, then the prior balance is lost.
- randomafrican 13y ago
  It's more an imbalance between social expectations and modern living. More conservative societies see a steeper decline in birthrate as women participation in the workforce increases. That's why France has one of the highest birthrate in Europe for instance.
  - novalis78 13y ago
    I disagree, I think the opposite is the case. American Caucasians have a higher fertility rate than almost all Western Europeans; birth rates in France typically include recent immigrant fertility rates which are significantly higher. The arguments to avoid children are similar to the Japanese: independence, more money for consumption, etc Disclaimer: I grew up in Germany/Austria and find the topic of Europeqn demographics quite intriguing

netcan 13y ago

There is something about Japan that really brings home the meaning of 'foreign' to me. I think that being the first rich, advanced large country that isn't western is the reason. On paper, they have a similar relationship with money, technology, their religion and traditional culture. I can't explain the strangeness away with those differences. When I read something like this about some trend or supposed cultural pathology cropping up, I have nothing to connect it to. I don't intuitively get where its coming from or why. Not even a hint. I don't know whether to dismiss it as conservatives concerned with something harmless, some fringe phenomenon or whatever.

DasIch 13y ago
Actually this phenomenon isn't that foreign. Less children being born, a falling number of "serious" relationships etc. are all things that can be observed in any technologically advanced society. Japan is just an extreme case because their current set of values doesn't deviate as much from more traditional values, which escalates the problem. Germany is actually somewhat similiar to Japan when it comes to these issues and while the results are by far not as extreme the reasons are very similar: lack of government support for modern types of families and traditional values that still have a strong impact on how children are supposed to be raised.
- _random_ 13y ago
  Unless you make your country wide-open to all sorts of immigrants. Than your birth-rate will be "OK".
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  None of my childres/nieces/nephews are married or have childred. They are all approaching their 30s. Something is going on. In a previous generation ALL would be married, ALL would have at least one child.

emiliobumachar 13y ago

Is there hard evidence that this is bad? Resource depletion is among the highest risks to civilization. Seems straightforward that severe population decline should be desired, and voluntary refraining from reproduction should be welcome. (Please don't just extrapolate the trend till extinction. See http://xkcd.com/605/ http://xkcd.com/605/. )

intelliot 13y ago
Is there convincing evidence that resource depletion is among the highest risks to civilization? Much of what I've seen shows the opposite: for example, China is a rising superpower largely because of their huge population. Having more people means more potential productivity, and that could lead to more prosperity. On the other hand, small countries with few people are usually able to accomplish little. Places with few inhabitants are considered rural and have a lower standard of living than places with high extremely high population density, like cities.
- emiliobumachar 13y ago
  I'm counting war over the increasingly scarce resources as part of the risk, so the current influence of mildly scarce resources over politics is evidence. I agree with your point that, from a nationalist perspective, population size is basically nation size.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    Wars aren't generally fought over resources these days.
    - willvarfar 13y ago
      As an armchair student, I'd judge most wars to be about resources. We must differ in definition of resources. Which recent wars are not about resources, do you think?

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Because parents and schools in the developed world have stopped raising kids and have instead opted for 18+ years of babysitting. Part of the problem is that we don't even know what we're about anymore, so we don't know what lessons and principles to pass on to our children. It's a wonder that the problem isn't far worse than it is already.

einhverfr 13y ago
One of the major things I see though in the article is the way in which modern corporate capitalism isolates individuals and tries to place career above family.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  You mean how individual people choose to place career above family? Don't see how modern corporate capitalism is doing that.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Having lived in some other countries, I disagree. This corresponds with corporate domination of the economy. Where small businesses dominate, family becomes more important. The reason is that family becomes the primary source of small business capital.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      (The family also becomes the source of one's "career" as well. It isn't that women don't participate in family businesses. They do, extensively. It's that family and work time are no longer separated by a wall.)

veidr 13y ago

This is a stupid article, and young people in Japan have not stopped having sex. What westerners might call 'casual sex' -- sex without the framework of a relationships that implies various other promieses/committments -- is normal, and also not likely to be spoken about frankly, especially to a reporter, and much less a British one. Sometimes I'll witness a young woman asked about it at a social gathering (as people have a few drinks and speak more freely). "I don't have anybody... I can't remember the last time I slept with somebody," she might say. What she means is that she doesn't have a steady boyfriend, and thus it is certainly none of your business who she's fucking. Or I will see a guy asked about it. "Well, romance is too complicated with all I've got going on... I've learned to live without it," he might say, with just the right amount of sheepishness. What he means is that he is seeking only sex that doesn't come with implied commitments and hassle. These two people might very well end up leaving together.

westicle 13y ago
This certainly isn't a phenomenon exclusive to Japan either. I know plenty of western young people who have no interest in marriage, procreation or families. Maybe they're more interested in their work. Maybe they're more interested in rock-climbing. Maybe they're more interested in Pokemon. More power to them, I say.
- jrs99 13y ago
  I think it's a bigger more existential problem that young people these days have.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Maybe they have too many electronic substitutes. There's nothing in the human makeup that says "will procreate even in the presence of unlimited sexual gratification elsewhere". Its certainly something to be studied and understood.
- 001sky 13y ago
  Anecdotally, this is directly correlated to the price of real-estate, and other parts of the world are only now catching up to Japan in this regards.

ceautery 13y ago

I loved the picture of the couple leaning away from each other; I think I was supposed to see that as an indicator of the purported epidemic. I think what the article was, however, was an advertisement for the former dominatrix. Apparently you can pay her to talk to you about women, pay her more to get naked while she talks about women, and maybe if you play your cards right...

jpatokal 13y ago
Generously assuming your comment is merely clueless instead of intentionally offensive, that sort of subtlety would hardly be necessary, as finding commercial sex in Tokyo is trivial. Most larger train station have red-light districts in the immediate vicinity, with (Japanese-only) signage making it extremely clear what's available.
- ceautery 13y ago
  I have no interest in what's available in Tokyo, only in how Abigail got that mess of an article taken seriously. You have bold claims regarding my understanding and intent to offend. Elaborate.
  - dthunt 13y ago
    I have literally been propositioned on the street between Shibuya and Ikejiri. Places I would not have expected it. I can't speak to signage, as I generally steer clear of areas that seem shady, and I wouldn't put a lot of trust into such things anyway. Regarding the source of much of the information in this article, I have little to offer. If you were to weigh the hypothesis that the source was advertising services against the hypothesis that this came up in conversation with the article author and she found this worth noting, which do you think is more likely, given that this is interesting information that is unlikely to be left out of a sex-charged article? In this case, being charitable about the parties involved in this article is probably correct.

unsignedint 13y ago

Few things I'm reading from Japanese people (albeit, I won't say this is unbiased observation) often cite unrealistic expectations of their partner's income, look, and personality. So, I've looked into the government research about it, at least for income part as it is being tangible. [1] As for income, there have been some research that lifetime unmarried rate would collaborate with income. (Mostly for male) [2] Their research further says that "In 2010, for male percentage of marriage for permanent employee is 27.7% while same for temp workers are 6.7%, resulting in about 20% of difference, while for female it is 28.2% for permanent workers, and 25.8% for temp workers, shows the much less difference. Therefore the increased rate of male temp workers is contributing to unmarriage rate or marriage at an older age. [3] [1] http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/index.html http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/index.htm.... [2] http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/image/n1020790.gif http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/image/n10... [3] http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/html/n1221000.html http://www.mlit.go.jp/hakusyo/mlit/h24/hakusho/h25/html/n122...

Crake 13y ago
I think I remember a study a while back that found that women expect their future husband(s) to make more than them, even though women make equal to men or more in my country. Naturally, this makes "good men" (according to this rather sexist definition of suitability) hard if not impossible to find. Women have been liberated from a lot of their gender roles, but seem fine with keeping men in theirs.

squirejons 13y ago

ever notice how the corporate media is always trying get more people into the developed nations? Mass immigration! More people! More People! More Babies! MOAR! MOAR! This baby dearth, combined with the ability of the japanese to keep their elites from increasing mass immigration, means less supply of labor, which means higher wage (remember supply and demand? It applies to labor, too). That means that the corporations that support the corporate media via advertising buys will pay more for labor. The media hates that! Also, fewer people means fewer consumers for the products advertised in the media. The media hates that! The media is the enemy of the majority working class citizen of the developed nations.

randomdata 13y ago
I cannot speak for all developed nations, but I always got the impression that the corporate media in America was very anti-children. Many shows highlight the trials and tribulations of having children. I cannot think of any popular program that focuses on the joys of having children.
pcurve 13y ago
Japan hasn't quite embraced foreign immigration the way many of its European counterparts have. It's an interesting demographic and economics experiments whose results we shall find out in coming 30-50 years. I'm willing to bet a lot of money that the low-birth rate trend will reverse at some point. A country with 1.2 birth rate will cease to exist in 200 years, and I just don't see that happening. More interesting questions to ask is: 1. What will trigger the trend reversal, and make young people reproduce more? (My guess is, vast reduction in standard of living and GDP) 2. And how long will it take for Japan to recover from the damage sustained? In a long run, I think Japan can pull it off. It will be in better shape than Europe 50 years from now.
guard-of-terra 13y ago
This doesn't work for Japan so well right now: lost generation, 10s of percents of temp jobs with bad pay...
kzrdude 13y ago
Did you notice that the current system is built upon growth? Growth in everything, in populations, users, consumers, prices, resource extraction etc etc

alinajaf 13y ago

Very interesting article, multiple points to make: If living and being in Japan has taught me anything, it's that generalising from anecdote is not a good idea. Case in point, if you visit an outlet mall a few miles outside of central Sendai on a weekend, you'd have a lot of trouble convincing anyone that Japanese people aren't making enough babies. It was very, very difficult to spot single people, or even couples without babies crawling all over them on our one day out there. In a population of nearly 130 million, if there's any generalisation you want to make about Japanese people, you'll find enough anecdotes to put together into a convincing article. On the usage of mendokusai, I think the author of the article may have misunderstood in the situation he's describing. I believe that in this situation mendokusai meant "It's tiresome to be constantly propositioned by male colleagues at work" rather than "I would have sex with everyone, but I can't be bothered". IME you use mendokusai whenever you're tired of something, along with describing a task that is tiresome.

pcurve 13y ago
I agree generalizing is not a good idea, but a single person wouldn't necessarily hang out at an outlet mall by himself either. (or spend a lot of time outside for that matter)
rhytha 13y ago
afaik, mendokusai = messy. But Japanese language is context base, so you can use same words for multiple situations.
- alinajaf 13y ago
  From jisho.org[1]: 面倒くさい - bother(some) to do; tiresome Also the word 面倒 translates to trouble, difficulty; care; attention;, so that with +くさい would make it troublesome. I've not heard it being used for messy, unless perhaps you mean messy as in a messy situation (rather than say, a messy room). [1]: http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E9%9D%A2%E5%80%92%E3%81%8F%E3%81%95%E3%81%84&eng=&dict=edict http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E9%9D%A2%E5%80%92%E3%81%8F%E3%81...

nkhodyunya 13y ago

Sex nowadays became a redundant, obsolete, risky, overcomplicated act which you can totally avoid with the help of good porn. So why bother with searching partner, if you can have all of sex benefits alone, but with porn or good imagination.

gradsolos 13y ago
This. With the amazing variety and quantity of high-quality porn nowadays, it never ceases to amaze me the great efforts people are willing to undergo for the possibility of sex. When I ask, most people admit they don't really like that place or feel like doing that, they do it only to increase their prospects of having casual sex. C'mon, it's the 21st century!
philwelch 13y ago
Are you a solipsist or just a virgin?
- nkhodyunya 13y ago
  Neither. I've tried casual sex when I was young, 5 or 7 times before realized it's totally overrated overhyped trash.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    Have you tried non-casual sex? The whole point of sex is to make an intimate connection with another person; I'll agree it's kind of pointless without that. But then again so is porn. Hence the original question: it's a very solipsistic attitude that porn is an adequate replacement for sex.
    - nkhodyunya 13y ago
      Yeah, i believe putting my dick into someone else pussy would make us "strongly connected" for at least some time, but I don't agree that the whole point of sex is intimate connection. I believe that the point is to make children. Or (as for me) to make orgasm.

jimgardener 13y ago

Not all people in India have premarital sex.In cities it may be different.But in rural areas very few does.This is not something people discuss with a journalist.I know many young men belonging to Christian communities who consider sex outside of marriage as a bad thing.

sexjpfr 13y ago

For those of you that know french. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PRPnG_se_o&hd=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PRPnG_se_o&hd=1

tokenadult 13y ago

This article would be a lot more informative if it looked at some other countries for comparison and contrast. Other countries that have been in the news for a high age of first marriage and a very low birthrate are Italy and Taiwan. What is similar about those countries, and what is different about them, alongside Japan? I have read that Taiwan (where I have lived during two different three-year periods of foreign residence and work) has the highest age of first marriage, and one of the lowest birthrates, of any country in the world. But Taiwan's culture is distinct from that of Japan, and some of the relevant workplace conditions and government policies are a bit different too. So what is the causation here?

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
The internet? Infinite sexual gratification is a new phenomenon. Does it correlate with this societal statistic?
speeder 13y ago
This also happened to late roman empire, just before their collapse. I know you like links, but I am busy now and cannot re-find them... But basically, any country that is prosperous enough to women work in equal terms to men in a safe environment (ie: police exists and army is strong), ends having women rights movements, a acceptance of homosexuals, and a sharp rise in individualism. Then a mix of this happen (usually all of it, and it DID happened in Rome): no-fault divorce (prompting huge amount of women-initiated divorces, and then men stopping marriages) babysitters and daycare (because women are not home to take care of children) great numbers of women that prefer their careers over marriage great numbers of men men that prefer goofing around instead of having responsability over a household. All this usually results in decline of births, and debt problems as countries start to debase their currency in a attempt to keep the same standard of living for the old while there is not enough young people (this is much worse in countries with military all over the globe, like Rome) Then you start having governments defaulting on obligations to pay police and army, undoing the conditions that allowed the equality, then your country either drift back to a previous condition, or if it was big enough and streched far enough, it collapses (like Rome did, as your defaulted police and army, immigrants covering for lack of native young people, and lack of native young people to defend their native land, makes your country a sitting duck for anyone that want to bring it down)

nhangen 13y ago

Who needs it when, for an extra fee, your 'therapist' will get naked and give you a tour of the female body. Talk about blurred lines.

n1ghtm4n 13y ago

Why has no one brought up overcrowding in Japan? You don't think that's going to affect the birth rate? http://inventorspot.com/articles/six_startling_scenes_overcrowded_6802 http://inventorspot.com/articles/six_startling_scenes_overcr...

kalleboo 13y ago
Meanwhile the Japanese countryside is depopulating at an amazing rate, leaving ghost towns in their wake, with elementary schools built for 700 students housing 2.
- n1ghtm4n 13y ago
  That's not necessarily a bad thing! People move to cities to find a better life, and they usually find it. That's great unless you think a life of rural poverty is some kind of noble virtue. The global population is 7.1 billion and rising fast. We should all cheer when we hear these statistics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization#Environmental_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization#Environmental_eff...

njharman 13y ago

"I can't be bothered." Sums up my feelings pretty much exactly. I lack much, if any parental instincts. I also lack any family or peer pressure to marry and make babies. Without the push to produce offspring relationships have more downsides than up. Children 10 times as so. I enjoy relationships (well most of them). But, there is so much to do and experience in the world. I'll never get to all before I die. There's no reason to spend my time in sub-optimal pursuits.

philwelch 13y ago

I can't help but read these stories and think, "well I guess that's what a dying culture looks like".

graycat 13y ago

Okay, take a town 60 years ago. Lots of people, say, o driving cars with tires that last only 15,000 miles, o driving cars with engines that last only 80,000 miles (due to poor lubrication due to water and gasoline in the oil due to inaccurate fuel mixture and ignition), o typing on typewriters with carbon paper, o doing business communications with printing and/or typing on paper sent by USPS, o an office telephone switchboard manned by employees. Now enter new technology, and each of these activities uses some automation, is much cheaper, and puts the old employees out of work. So, have lots of unemployed people with little or no money who want to make money and consume but cannot get jobs. Why not jobs? For one, the total number of jobs shrank, and as in musical chairs some people don't get one. For another, to create more jobs need some ideas for new products/services, some capital to get the businesses going, and some qualified employees. The unemployed people will need some new training, that is, investments in 'human capital'. As we know from depressions, can have a shortage of capital, lots of people not consuming who want to work but no jobs for them to do. Then if have a war, suddenly can have three jobs for everyone who can work at all. There is also an effect of the ratios of people to land and other natural resources. With high density population, the prices of such resources increase. Maybe when the population of Japan, Finland, France, Germany, Russia, the US, etc. shrink, the new ratio will make it easier for a couple to form a family. E.g., if the population is low enough that a young couple can easily buy 200 acres of good farm land, then there will be some new alternatives for that couple to form a family. Now at maybe $5000 an acre, let's, see, 200 acres would be $1 million. She's 18; he's 22; and where are they going to get $1 million or even a down payment plus farm equipment and materials for a house? Presumably in time startups will find new products and services that people want and that can make use of the unemployed. But, in that town when automation put the typists out of work, the jobs of some people were not affected and, first cut, by having the company spend much less on typing, could pay their remaining employees more. So, some people are doing well. And in Japan, the article seems to suggest that real estate prices are so high that no one can afford them! No! Instead, real estate prices are so high just because enough people actually can afford them. So, some people are doing well, and maybe they, or their lucky heirs, are forming traditional families.

graycat 13y ago

The Japanese in the article are missing out on what man/woman love can really mean and the value it can have. So there should be not just 'friction' but 'love' (with the help that Mother Nature provides) with commitment, caring, affection, intimacy, passion, joining of lives, vows, romance, trust (he doesn't return from a business trip and discover that she's drained the checkbook and savings account, took the best of the household belongings and the dog, and is gone), respect, responsiveness (they respond to each other), supportive families (e.g., he gets a job in her father's business), collection of activities, memories, and traditions like, don't want to lose, can't get anywhere else, and that cause 'lock in', homes ("where the heart is, where you are loved even when you are wrong"), and children ("the most rewarding thing we did"). Joining? For a few hundred years in Western Civilization, standard marriage vows started off with "We gather together to join this man and this women with the bonds of holy matrimony.", and there is wisdom there. Or, for a more direct explanation, she has two legs. He has two legs. If she breaks a leg, then she is down to one leg to help her broken leg get well. But joined with him with good vows, commitment, etc. they have four legs with three good legs to help her broken leg get well. The three legs are three times better than just the one. Can rattle off 10,000 such cases faster than can say them. People don't want to be alone. Being alone is scary. Nearly all baby mammals know this. Being joined to someone is much more secure. This can be great stuff, some of the best in life, even without children, and one night stands are nothing like the same. The article omitted nearly all the really good stuff.

analog31 13y ago

There's an analogous effect that's reportedly been around for a long time, possibly worldwide: An anti-correlation between birth rates and things like the education and economic empowerment of women. In addition, even the US has seen a decline in birth rates resulting from economic stagnation. Is Japan an exception, or merely an extreme case due to the tenacity of workplace sex discrimination?

UUMMUU 13y ago

I like it how they're trying to "fix" the population decline. A population decline might actually be a good thing for our species. There are too many people and an ever increasing sense of stupidity

victorhooi 13y ago
Well, yes, until you actually think it through, and realise that this also means your population is aging... Basically, you have a bunch of old people around, and nobody to support them, or fuel the society. And after a certain point, you can't reverse it, and you no longer have a viable society.

alkonaut 13y ago

The problem isn't so much the sex is it? The problem is of course demographic. Related, but not the same. Amazingly the government of Japan surely understands the problem at hand, and still refuses to act. Labour laws of course cannot allow an employer to fire someone (or choose not to hire) based on pregnancy (or being a woman of that age). There is only one sure way of making women as desirable to hire in this respect: ensure men stay at home with children just as much as women. State subsidized childcare and a year or two of paid maternal/paternal leave per child would be a net win for Japan (as it is for most such countries).

nctorn 13y ago

I see this trend in other industrialized countries, like in western Europe. I believe probably a very important cause of this demographic imbalance is the equality factor. Women work same as men, earn same as men and feel empowered. This is great for the individual, but then the society as a whole remains out of equilibrium. For some reason being independent (able to buy what I want, when I want it and work 20 hours a day) is better than rising a family and having children. Things that are after all, the reason of what as species, are suppose to be doing in this planet. The signal is then clear, you fail to do that, but being to extinct. This is exactly what begins where this trends are prevalent. Perhaps we need to rethink the roles and if being independent is something that in the long term will create more value for the group.

Futurebot 13y ago

When we talk about the medium or long term, we should also start to consider the impact of life-extension, and more importantly, youth preservation technologies; the entire issue of "young supporting the old" disppears if people stop aging. There is virtually no government support for research to support this, even though we should consider it one of the most important issues in history (and many diseases simply a subset of the "disease" of aging.) Perhaps trends like the ones discussed in the article will get governments thinking about it (and having Google investing in this area is a nice boost.)

21echoes 13y ago

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/10/23/are_japanese_people_really_having_less_sex_than_anyone_else.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/10/23/are_japanes...