50% of Japanese surveyed have not had sex in the past month | Hacker News Reader

50% of Japanese surveyed have not had sex in the past month

bloomberg.com

46 pointsjrambos53 comments

It's not the technology nor the porn. It's the stress and work hours. Japanese work very long hours, and very hard jobs. High stress and very little free time create exhausted people who do not have time to do anything but attempt to recover for the next day. Tired people do not have energy nor motivation, get sick more, and don't have time to socialize or to date.

Japan needs labor reform, shorter working days, more vacation time.

I used to work with a team of Japanese devs who were visiting the US for some work. At our company we do 8 hours then go home. The devs told me that they didn't know what to do at home after work since they were used to working 12 hour days back in Japan.

As the articles I linked waaaaay at the bottom of this comment section suggest, this is not a uniquely Japanese phenomenon.

Exactly. Japanese style work ethic is a pandemic spread across east Asia, in which, devotion(even pretended) wins over efficiency. It also leads to a paternalistic company structure, where your workplace is your home and your boss is the owner.

Ultimately, this sacrifices the employee's personal time by blurring the boundary between life and work. Sadly, a lot of researches show long working hour doesn't necessarily leads to actual output, but the ideology is still largely respected and practiced.

How does this explain herbivore men and otaku and the stay at home 'parasites' (parasaitu shinguru) who have quite a lot of free time on their hands from engaging in sex with a steady partner -rather than soapland stuff or out abstinence/grazing.

Easily: look outside, decide the world is still a fucked-up place, stay inside. "Normal" social interactions with other people will drag you into society, and you sure don't want that, avoid that too.

The title on HN is downright misleading. "... the Japan Family Planning Association interviewed 3,000 subjects, both male and female, about their sex lives." Those aren't couples, they're just random men and women from what I understand this text.

Also, I have lived in Japan for the past 5 years and around me at least a lot of people are (very) sexually active, in fact, too active, or too casual usually. Most guys date multiple girls/have multiple sex friends, and even if they're married or in a relationship, many have sex partners other than their girlfriend/spouse.

Despite the misleading title, I wouldn't be surprised if couples reply that they haven't have sex with each other for the past month and were telling the truth (because they're too busy having sex with other partners).

Spot on.

...however, its also fair to say studies like these work their way up into the Japanese government policy think tank.

The 3 billion yen in match making & services is no joke.

The government is obsessed with the issue, which is more troubling than the reality of sexuality in Japan.

Can I guess that you are a tech yuppie, whose social circle consists mostly of other tech yuppies? Most people around the world are not tech yuppies in a recession. Try asking a dropout or a convenience store clerk about the sex they're having and you might get a less outrageous answer.

I'm an engineer but my social circle is mostly made up of people who are not in web/tech, and from all kinds of industries (marketing, finance, medical, real-estate, business owners, etc). So this definitely does not (just) apply to the tech industry.

You criticize the methodology by citing anecdotal evidence. That's worse.

Also it doesn't explain the correlation with the recession.

I only criticized the title of the HN post, because it differs from what what was written in the article.

What followed was what I observed from my personal experiences, and I did not say that my personal experiences necessary reflect the state of the whole of Japan, nor vice versa, or prove this article false. These are just my personal observations, which happen to be the opposite of what was stated in the article.

Also, in addition to the very small sample set (3000 out of millions, even if we are just considering the age group mentioned), it also provides little to no detail of the sample selected (location, marital status etc). IMHO this is article seems sensationalist to me, or just bad journalism (no links to concrete sources or data).

How old are you?

Turning 32 this year.

These guys should grow some balls and just separate from their "partners".

We changed the title to make it less misleading. Sorry we didn't see this earlier.

It's interesting that these articles always bring up weird Japanese subcultures. The fertility rates of Singapore and Republic of Korea are lower than Japan's, and they have fallen far more precipitously (by more than 75% since 1960). The mainstream pop-demographics articles about those countries' fertility rates tend to focus more on the realistic explanations.

Perhaps because because those two groups display caution when choosing when to have children, rather than an outright rejection of human interaction in favor of a simulacra?

You are making the same error that the lern_too_spel was pointing out. Japan is not anime and otaku -- that is just the part of the culture that has been exported successfully. The typical Japanese person hasn't exchanged normal human interaction in favor of simulacra.

>>The typical Japanese person hasn't exchanged normal human interaction in favor of simulacra.

I don't know, but we have statistics to answer this question, which is precisely what we are talking about. Did you know that 50% of Japanese couples have not had sex in the past month? [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8945585

This may be a case of Poe's law. If it is, pardon my funny bone.

But if you aren't joking, may I humbly submit to your consideration that, "did not have sex," and "did give up normal human interaction in favor of simulacra" are two different things. Statistics about solely about one of these things cannot be used to derive meaningful conclusions about the other.

So... you've created speculation based on a statistic, and used said statistic to "prove" your speculation is correct.

Actually if you bother to read the article instead of playing circular logic games in the thread you'd notice:

"To examine Japanese attitudes toward sex, the Japan Family Planning Association interviewed 3,000 subjects, both male and female, about their sex lives."

There is no mention of couples. It interviewed 3000 subjects who may or may not be in a relationship. The title is inaccurate.

Or maybe more relatable to westerners: Germany also has a lower fertility rate than Japan. Nobody's writing these articles about why Germans won't have kids.

I'd be more interested in articles exploring how we can create an economy and society that doesn't rely on neverending expansion (and ever-increasing energy usage), seeing as this is the trend in all western countries, and the immigration band-aid will only be possible for so long.

Even Italy and Spain, having anticipated Pope Francis's sentiment three decades in advance, have lower fertility rates than Japan.

Two solutions to your demographics problem are to reduce the cost of elder care (http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/05/automation-el...) or to raise the retirement age (http://business.asiaone.com/news/raise-retirement-age-70-lim...).

Germany can "import" any EU national as well as the immigrants (not all of them EU nationals) having a higher fertility rate.

That's not a solution though, that's a band-aid. I guess I understand that's why it's not in the news today, but personally I'm more interested in the long-term than short-term.

As countries develop the fertility rate drops. This is happening across the planet. Eventually there won't be anywhere to get new immigrants. (there will also be problems before that if you look at places like France, the UK and Scandinavia where resistance against immigration is rising in the form of anti-immigration parties)

I agree, in the long term countries will have to learn how to deal with low fertility rates.

As a slight tangent, patio11 and his partner in crime/podcasts Keith Perhac talked a little about this on their podcast - basically the hours / presenteeism culture of salarymen has an anecdotal negative impact on family and married life there - basically too knackered.

It's an odd trade off that is not really needed - so it's interesting to see what will happen as the discussion of it moves from "what everyone knows but does not say" to " officially allowed to say it because of science"

Japan has been in 25-30 year recession. Due to government polices the Japanese have seen their wealth deteriorate and the hardest hit are the young professionals who have work more than their elders. If people don't feel financially secure they don't procreate. This issue is only going to grow more pronounced as nations devalue in the race to the bottom. However for Japan the problem is exacerbated with great ideas like the one below. FTA:

“handsome tax”: “If we impose a handsome tax on men who look good to correct the injustice only slightly, then it will become easier for ugly men to find love, and the number of people getting married will increase.”

Don't fertility rates _decrease_ with prosperity? Poor families have more kids because they acts as financial security in the old age. How do we reconcile these two theories?

Fertility rates decline most strikingly due to the education of women in society:

http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2011/highlights1...

"Female education is especially important. Research consistently shows that women who are empowered through education tend to have fewer children and have them later. If and when they do become mothers, they tend to be healthier and raise healthier children, who then also stay in school longer. They earn more money with which to support their families, and contribute more to their communities’ economic growth. Indeed, educating girls can transform whole communities."

A bit older study:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/97facts/edu2birt.htm

"A women's educational level is the best predictor of how many children she will have, according to a new study from the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study, based on an analysis of 1994 birth certificates, found a direct relationship between years of education and birth rates, with the highest birth rates among women with the lowest educational attainment.

Birth rate patterns also vary greatly by mothers age. Among women in their twenties - the peak childbearing ages - and women in their forties, birth rates are highest for women with the least education. For women with college degrees, rates are highest for those in their early thirties, perhaps signaling the preferred time for childbearing by this group. First birth rates for women in their thirties with a college degree were two to five times the first birth rates for women with less education."

Because japan is a highly competitive society where the kids who had the fortune of having financial resources poured into their education "win" and the rest lose. The would be parents of the struggling middle class (quickly being eroded, just like everywhere else) feel that bringing in a child to this society without the financial backing ms chance of success would be cruel to the child.

At least in the US, fertility rates are affected by recessions. http://www.prb.org/publications/datasheets/2012/world-popula...

While prosperous women may have less, overall if the economy is good, more kids are born.

I'm not saying the following is 100% water tight, but hopefully it can show how such seemingly different theories can reconcile:

A society where child labour is almost as valuable as adult labour and you can have your 10 year olds help around the shop/farm/whatever as cheap labour. This is a poor society.

Then you have a different type of society where educated people go to offices or handle expensive machinery at factories, and children can't help around supporting the household. The jobs they can perform add too little value to bother, and their time is better invested in education. This is a rich society.

I think it is fair to say that fertility as a reaction to immediate changes in the economy of those two societies are different.

Those stats seem slightly misleading. The 49% of participants who had not had sex in the past month seems to include people who are single. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the 50% of couples include couples who havnt had sex ever.

Still interesting.

Sex is not fun. Someone needs to say it. Unless you and your partner are devoted to sex it is not fun. In a society where one of the partners doesn't have a voice (woman, usually) that doesn't matter because consent is per-definition not necessary to produce children. Games probably trigger a lot more endorphins than sex (over the span of a day, or week).

Education means to care about things other than the immediate future and we learn to sympathise with each other. We do care about the opinion and about other goals which is why we spend time caring about the bigger goals more than about the fun ones. After all: fun is for children... This whole combination makes enjoying sex incredibly difficult imho.

Making sex fun is an effort many people don't go through. I talk with Japanese friends (I am living in Japan for 4 years now) and many just don't know the least about it. I am guessing that its similar for other cultures.

You have a choice:

1) spend all your money on yourself and have around 6 hours of free time every workday + weekend and be moderately happy.

2) make a lot of effort of approaching different girls, getting rejected and then spending your time and money on the girlfriend (and she could still cheat on you meanwhile) and potentially be quite happy.

http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.h...

Employment prospects are worse than ever for the average japanese person, with about 40% of the workforce working on temp contracts with no job security.

Shitty income and no job security = no marriage = no kids.

For other population declines, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline#Japan

What is with the media and its fixation on japanese sex?

Well, it is one of the largest economies in the world, and it is doing poorly in large part because of a shrinking population. But you are right that the focus on Japanese sex seems a bit excessive. My theory is that it's related to western fetishization of the country, but I don't have proof.

Maybe because on the one hand they're 'liberalized' about it --you have the soaplands and the manga and the pixelation, everywhere --and yet, where it counts they reject it, to some extent.

But yeah, when it comes to fetishising societies and sex it's either Japanese or Swedes.

> But yeah, then it comes to fetishising societies and sex it's either Japanese or Swedes.

Maybe this is because these countries are extremes of Collective vs Individuality.

Source: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&art... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Values_Survey

Knowing Japanese porn Im not that surprised. Japanese men are between awkward and weird when it comes to interacting with women.

Here's wikipedia's overview of Birth rates :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...

You can sort it. It's quite informative. It also shows that the difference between Japan and most of Europe is somewhat marginal. 8 vs 10.

But what would be a "steady-state" birth rate ? Well life expectancy is ~70 years. So 1000 people should produce 1000 offspring in ~70 years. So steady-state birth-rate would be in the 14-15 range. Changes compound over time, so numbers close to 14-15 will effectively be equal to that whereas differences with that number have exponential effects.

That seems to indicate that the vast majority of the world is slowly losing population (though that does not -yet- result in large declines of people). On the map that would be everything blue, green up to bright green, with sub-saharan Africa the only place that will experience rapid population growth from now on.

But despite the low birth rates in Europe, the populations are still rising through immigration. So we've turned the developing countries into "baby machines" to fuel the European economy's thirst for growth.

They are only just rising.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_European_Un...

Looking at my comment history, I get the impression someone's systematically downvoting all my comments. Can I report this anywhere ?

Oh dear, a paywall. Here's a similarly milquetoast but literally more accessible treatment of the topic: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...

But don't close that tab, 'cuz I'm coming at ya with the Silicon Valley bleeding heart liberal nouveau riche's most hated news publication, Breitbart! Be offended! Take the bait, hook, line, and sinker! Reply with a snarky dismissal insulting the intelligence of anyone that would dare link to such a rag! And maybe, just maybe, taste the subtle grit of a grain of the substance we call "truth."

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/12/04/the-sexodus-part-...

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/12/09/the-sexodus-part-...

Yiannopoulos can sing exactly one note and even that is off-key.

Japan is very different from the West though, so you should clarify which parts you think actually apply to Japan too. E.g. Japan is well behind the curve compared to the West when it comes to sex disparity in school dropouts or university attendance, though it's certainly moving in the same direction. (See http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/, and click on gender differences and then limit to education, you get women 7.7 men 7.6 in Japan vs women 7.3 men 6.3 in the US)

Entirely appropriate that you need to scare quote the word 'truth' when citing anything from that Milo kid.

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