In Japan, sex is becoming a luxury for the working poor, according to Spa! magazine, which claims that a ‘sex gap‘ is being producing by decreasing full employment and the growing ‘income gap,’ which in turn, is a relatively new phenomenon for a country that has long prided itself on equally shared rising prosperity.
Surveying 300 men, aged 25-39 earning ¥2,000,000 (about £9,500) a year or less, Spa! finds 65% of them dissatisfied with their sex lives and just 15.7% satisfied, whilst the remaining 19.3% had simply given up on sex, claiming to have no interest in it. A fact which could explain why more than 20% of the respondents reported they were still virgins.
According to Spa! “Men who give up on love, put the human race at risk.” And further commenting on Japan’s low birth rate and aging, shrinking population, Gynaecologist Tsuneo Akaeda, Director of the Akaeda Roppongi Clinic claimed:
The low birth-rate problem is a Freeter problem.
A Freeter is the Japanese term for someone who is part of the estimated 3 million people (excluding homemakers and students) that lack full-time employment or are unemployed. Many of these are people who found themselves locked out of normal full-time employment by the hiring freeze of the recession-bound 1990s. Most are now into their 30s, still struggling to survive on part-time or temporary employment, in a hand-to-mouth existence, where sex is a luxury.
Akaeda says:
Give these young people stable employment, and you’d solve the birth-rate problem.
Some 78.7% of Spa!’s respondents still live with their parents, and sex is hard with Mum and Dad in the next room. There are love hotels, of course, but who can afford them on 2 million yen a year? At that economic level, even basic dating becomes difficult. However, Spa! says that nowadays working women don’t mind paying their share; but its difficult for proud young Japanese men to propose this arrangement without losing face, and the men in question aren’t socially experienced enough to pull it off.
The magazine continues, it’s typical for men to exclaim “I can’t ask a woman to pay,” so they stay at home instead. But, there’s a tragicomic misunderstanding at work here, because:
Lately, career women actually tend to favour Freeters. Unlike male full-time company employees, Freeters are not too overwhelmed with work to be available when they’re wanted. And with men who don’t make much money, there’s not the constant worry that they may be playing around when your back is turned.
In fact, their ‘playing around’ is largely confined to solitary relief. With Internet porn sites and a proliferating ‘adult video’ industry, these men can comfortably (and economically) take care of their hormonal urges, which in normal circumstances would drive them to seek female company.
This masturbatory surge has Dr Akaeda worried:
An increasing number of men who indulge in immoderate and continual masturbation, suffer a diminished ability to ejaculate with a live sexual partner.
However, Economist Takashi Kadokura has an interesting suggestion:
Sex volunteers.
There are sex volunteers for the elderly and for the handicapped. Why not for the working poor as well?
Posted by Jonathan in Miscellaneous