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Married or single, Japan is a desolate country

by Michael Hoffman

Special To The Japan Times

“The past century is a history of sexual distortion,” social psychologist Hiroyoshi Ishikawa told Time Magazine in 1983.

“A small portion of young people in Japan are sexually very, very active,” he added, “while the vast majority are sexually repressed.”

What would he say if he surveyed the scene today? Probably that not much has changed in 30 years — except that the “small portion” grows steadily smaller.

Japan is a lonely, lonely country, if two reports, one in Spa magazine and the other in the weekly Aera, reflect the true state of things. The former focuses on single life, the latter on marriage. Both come across as sad, abject, mournful failures. You wouldn’t choose either, if you had a choice — and what else is there?

Spa polls 600 single men aged 35-45. They are some of the freest people on Earth — accountable to no one, responsible for no one, well enough off financially. They can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Why are they miserable?

“I was sick, I had a noro virus,” recalls a 41-year-old executive — “and there was nobody around to even bring me a glass of water.”

“Who can I go traveling with?” sighs a 38-year-old civil servant. “All my friends are married and have kids — they can’t come with me.”

“With someone you love, even McDonald’s would be delicious. With my parents, the best-cooked meal is just a chore to slog through,” complains a 39-year-old banker.

“Everyone at work is forever going on about child-care issues — ‘day-care centers in my neighborhood give you such a warm welcome; medical treatment for kids is free,’ and so on and so on. What am I supposed to contribute to this?” grumbles a 38-year-old office worker.

“I see all those happy families,” confides a 45-year-old businessman, “and think to myself, ‘Even if I get married tomorrow’ — which isn’t going to happen — ‘I’ll be 57 when my kids are that age.’ “

Other questions aside, are “all those happy families” really so happy? Not if we believe Aera, whose subject — not the anomaly it sounds — is sexless marriage. Between 40 percent and 50 percent of all marriages in Japan are said to be sexless.

In old Japan, marriage was essentially a device to produce family heirs. That done, husbands typically pursued love, eros and romance in the licensed pleasure quarters while wives seethed at home in silent frustration. The sexless marriage of today is different. Aera cites research by gynecologist Kunio Kitamura showing its leading causes: for men, fatigue from work; for women, a weary feeling that “sex is more trouble than it’s worth.”

Psychiatrist Teruo Abe tells Aera of a new, or newly identified, syndrome among married couples: “sex disgust syndrome.” It seems a predominantly male affliction. It is not impotence; merely a sexual aversion for one’s wife — rooted, according to Abe, in a tendency for the marital relationship to evolve over the years into a quite different relationship: mother-son, for example, or sister-brother, or friend-friend (never father-daughter, it seems). In some cases one spouse becomes the other’s “mascot.” And sometimes, of course, there arises outright mutual hostility, not to say hatred.

Mother-son is most common, says Abe — which explains the “disgust” characteristic of the syndrome. It is, he adds, very difficult to cure.

Shouldn’t singles, instead of brooding over their loneliness, count their blessings? Why should a man get married, after all? Why should he saddle himself with family cares, family expenses, a family’s claim on his time, only to end up sexless? What’s in it for him? At least a bachelor can enjoy a syndrome-free sex life — can’t he?

Theoretically, yes; in real life, apparently not. Spa’s survey of 600 finds 72.3 percent have no girlfriend; 36.7 percent have been sexless for more than three years.

This is more than sad — it’s dangerous, warns psychiatrist Takehiko Kasuga. “It is becoming increasingly clear,” he tells the magazine, “that isolation is a factor in dementia. If you habitually spend your days off without anyone to talk to, by the time you’re into your 50s and 60s you could find yourself on the road to dementia” — or if not that, depression, to which under the best of circumstances we tend to grow more vulnerable as we age.

What has gone wrong with us? What have we done to ourselves?

Well, we work too hard; everyone knows that. It’s not entirely our fault; the economy demands it of us. Forty hours a week is considered more or less normal. Work 60 hours, and researchers consider you a candidate for karōshi (death from overwork). Gynecologist Kitamura has calculated a line beyond which we’re in danger of being too tired for sex — 49 hours.

A more subtle factor is sex education, which Japan somehow can’t seem to get right, Aera hears from Kagawa Nutrition University nutrition professor Noriko Hashimoto. She reviews Japanese sex education over the past 20 years and concludes, “No wonder we’re sexless.”

Sex education in the 1990s, Hashimoto explains, was a panicked response to the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s. Suddenly fifth-graders were handed textbooks showing mature human bodies making babies. It was too much too fast. Sex was made to look ugly, dirty, clinical. The reaction that set in seems the epitome of good intentions gone wrong. The naked human body illustrations were scrapped, and in their place — reader, you’ll never guess — copulating sea urchins.

Any questions?

  • gnirol

    But they were happy sea urchins. Here’s the problem: the line that said “It’s not entirely our fault; the economy demands it of us.” Who is this “economy”? Where does he or she live? Why don’t we go there and try to persuade him/her not to be so demanding? The economy doesn’t demand anything. The people, people, yes people, who control the economy demand it. They tell us how we are expected to live, to fulfill their expectations for their lives. They tell us we can’t possibly get along without this, that or the other gadget. These gadgets claim to bring us together, but they really separate us by the extreme distance of cyberspace. After all, while I am typing this of a Saturday night, I am not out on a date or looking for a new friend and potential partner. Ya think someone who reads this is going to respond and ask me out? And if they do — I’m not holding my breath — will I simply say, “Sorry, I’d love to, but I’m usually too tired to go out. How about January 21st, 2014 at 9pm?”

  • http://ameblo.jp/cluttered-talk/ Michiko

    I’m convinced that the writer, doesn’t like or love us so much, maybe a little, but his aversion is much more than his love toward Japan.
    I don’t feel any positive feeling of us from this article.
    Malicious.
    He teases us, and next time appears his sympathy, and teases again, on and on and we’re coming up with no good in the upshot.
    Japanese people are no good, helpless, let’s laugh, conclusion was already there before written.
    This kind of doing might be some of his revenge, but I’m not interested in what for.
    Even I understand there has to be no such thing for him to retort on while almost all of Japanese girls are usually agreeable with every Westerner.

    • Christopher-trier

      Of course Japanese people are helpless, hopeless and no good — that’s why Japanese people have managed to survive thousands of years in an unstable archipelago with scant natural resources building one of the most sophisticated and economically successful societies the world has seen along the way. Japan has a lot of problems, just like every other country. Japan, much like the rest of the developed world, has to grapple with the problems of affluence (lower birth-rates, lower marriage rates, an ageing population, even materialism taken to an extreme) but its problems are not unique. To loosely quote and paraphrase Austin Coates, issues that would not merit a second look in ones own society take on a new, sinister light when seen in another society.

    • P. Ijima-Washburn

      I didn’t feel this post was judgmental at all. This is an actual serious social problem that could have serious after-effects on society as a whole.

    • HarrisN

      A very typical reaction. Are you speaking for all Japanese?

    • OlivierAM71

      Sorry, but I wonder if you did not misread the article!
      I do think that is precisely because Michael Hoffman loves Japan that he is writing this article. He worries about Japanese people love/sexual lives. And points at some important facts that explain some of the reasons why love/sex is on the brink of a collapse in your country.
      He actually tries to say that Japan should act quickly to avert the process already too far engaged now.

  • HarrisN

    You seem to completely disregard the fact that there is still a social stigma attached to a Japanese woman having a foreign boyfriend / spouse. That only applies to couples living inside Japan, of course, but it does come at a price and many Japanese women who plan their lives in Japan are not ready to pay it.

    • disqus_Gvs3G32z1K

      Quite frankly, I have no sympathy for that aspect of their society.
      The married couples I mentioned earlier sometimes talked about the
      negative response some people had to their relationship, but they got
      married anyway and are now quite happy. Society here needs to get with times and stop stigmatizing those who are actually doing their part by starting families.

  • disqus_Gvs3G32z1K

    I only really have one guy friend, and he’s the anti-social one I mentioned in my earlier comment.

  • HarrisN

    Can you point out (quote) the passages you think are malicious or lacking “love and respect”?

    • http://ameblo.jp/cluttered-talk/ Michiko

      Can you tell me where would I sense his love or respect but scorn or aversion, before you ask me.
      Also tell me how would you award it when you see this kind of article about your own country people, written by some Japanese author.

  • tank

    Been to London myself a few times, saw a lot of rude people bumping into people. Living in Tokyo currently, never had an issue.

    • Pari

      Ooh, I missed a point – If that did happen in London it was mostly foreign tourists who didn’t really understand British manners i.e. queuing for the train, not going in front of everyone else, pushing etc. If I think of British people or Japanese people, I think British people are way more polite and emphatic.

      • AsianLibertarian

        You really believe that, LOL. Brits, Aussies and Americans are known as some of the rudest people in the entire world.

  • MeTed

    This is one thing that isn’t mentioned enough. The porn industry.

    There’s no doubt that Japan’s omnipresent sex industry is destroying people’s perceptions about real sex and love.

    • Cecilia Flynn

      This is not a problem exclusive to Japan but a huge problem in the West also

  • Japanish

    Tonyed, you went through courtship when the economy was booming and English teachers had good jobs , pay and status. That is no longer the case. Options have just gotten worse for Japanese women since then. There are no rich foreigners left to give them a nice comfortable life. Guys, Japanese women will not get together with you because you have no prospects as long as you stay in Japan, and they know it.

  • PD

    Jeezus man were you dating some yakuza daughter?
    Letters written in blood are a bit over the top. I don’t doubt your story but damn, seems like the town went crazy when you two got together.
    Of course, when I asked my Japanese father-in-law if I could marry his daughter to just replied, “I’ll think about it.” hehe

  • http://ameblo.jp/cluttered-talk/ Michiko

    Thank you for your reply.
    I think you might have overreacted, “Japan is great” or “Behold us” is never an essence of my address.
    I’ve been remarking its oppsite issue ever since.
    And I don’t think you actually understand us for a bit, if you really think of me uttering “Japan is great”.
    I’m pretty exhausted by looking at someone “self-claiming Japan well learned person”.
    There’s no such an individual except for few academics, for real.

  • El Anon

    I’d like to see statistics on sexual activity, comparing people who work too hard, versus people who often travel. I assume that people have much more sex on holiday than they do when they are working till last train every night.

  • Eamon

    What’s irritating is the amount of energy spent by people criticizing Japan as if it WAS the only country with these issues. In some ways Italy has more of the same problems than Japan but there’s not such an anti-Italy crowd on the internet. I wonder why…

    • Cecilia Flynn

      Absolutely it’s ridiculous!

  • Eamon

    If you can point out a US paper that says something like this about America you get the point: “Married or single, Japan is a desolate country.” There is unhappiness in Japan just like everywhere else, but I find Japanese people to be more positive and caring about people than other countries I’ve been to.

  • Eamon

    “like most Japanese couples the wife was bedding her work mate”

    Where’s your proof to back that up?

    • Cecilia Flynn

      Only the Japanese commit adultery according to the eternal whingers on here, doncha know, rolls eyes!

  • Eamon

    This is also pretty typical. There are people in many (and I would guess most) countries that insist that their country is better than others despite flaws (often many flaws) and despite those flaws being in the media all the time. Everyone’s experience is different but I have not experienced some “real Japan” that everyone is trying to hide. My family and friends in Japan, and the Japanese people I know in the United States love their country despite its flaws, not because they deny they are there.

  • http://ameblo.jp/cluttered-talk/ Michiko

    Thank you for your reply.
    I see, that you’re capable of ignoring any of expressions regarding your country, maybe it is because of your matured character.
    Then I wonder, why would such a matured man have got eager to make some Japanese woman shut up?
    Why couldn’t he just ignore it, I don’t get it.
    I think it is not going to bother this matured man, with whatever a Japanese woman speaks.
    Is her English skill relevant to something making him do that?
    Then he may teach her so that she’s getting less annoying.

    • N. Yokoyama

      The article by Mr. Hoffman is judgmental from the first line. It judges that psychology is an exact discipline, one that promises to describe some disease and treat it too.

  • David

    I have no interest in indulging someone else’s dishonesty, but appreciate the advice anyway.

    What someone will do to another person to be with you, they will do the same to you to be with someone else. I wish women especially understood this better, but men need to know it, too.

    Personally, I think cheating is going outside of the relationship to get needs met. Generally, those needs are sexual and emotional ones. If you factor in cheating to get emotional needs met, I wouldn’t be surprised if the statistics between genders were fairly even. I am not certain of the assertion, “Well, you know how men get around.” They are more brazen or stupid about it maybe, but women get theirs, especially here where the work situation makes it very easy to have an affair due to partners being separated for a long time.

    Feminism? That’s a different topic altogether. What I do think is that the a lack of mores regarding cheating or failing to take care of your spouses needs has its own flavor in Japan that is historically ingrained and *in some ways* unique to this country. I have noticed that Japanese people or fans of Japan have a tendency to equivocate between Japan’s problems and other countries’ problems. This is not a realistic or mature approach. Not all criticisms or observations of negative things are an evil needing to be denied.

    When people told me “Japan is a lonely place,” I thought that simply had to do with those people being unable to make friends. In my nearby city, I see male and female escorts on the street, either for sex or just company. There are bars that exist for this purpose as well. I think it says something about people’s sexual and emotional needs not being met in a healthy way, and a lack of understanding of how to meet these needs, when you have to pay for these things.

    I have also never been solicited for sex by a minor until I came to Japan- I actually argued with a 17 year old online (who had lied about her age initially) that she was too young (I wasn’t online for sex anyway, so it was a double loss on her part that I’m both abstinent and not a pedophile). After that conversation, I marveled. If I were any less of a man, the end result could have been quite different. And, I have to wonder if it is in many cases.

    Any casual look at Japanese media and art shows a casual attitude towards sexuality. Manga isn’t exactly niche here. Is it any surprise, in that case, that underage sex and cheating is happening? Fidelity is unraveling similarly in America. None of it is surprising. The independent vs socially conscious underpinnings just create unusual side effects in Japan (super cold marriages) vs America (rampant divorce and straight up cohabiting). I am not advocating morality per se; just observing what happens in its absence.

    • Cecilia Flynn

      If they will do it with you they’ll do it too you, agreed.
      Most stay in unsatisfactory relationships though fear of being alone in modern times it’s often about money not willing to split the money or sell the house but then many just settle for what’s on offer to begin with. It’s bound to work out even otherwise who are these men/women cheating with?
      People are people wherever you go there is nothing unique about the Japanese and I don’t say that because I’m a fan. People say London is a lonely city and for some it is. Men pick up hookers for company or sex in the West also.
      You have never been solicited for sex by a minor, my god you amaze me, it happens here all the time. In most cases yes the results are quite different from your outcome sadly but I do commend you for behaving in a responsible adult manner. In Britain we are the teenage pregnancy capital of the world, not good but true nonetheless.
      Attitudes to sex in the East are far more relaxed yes but in Christian societys we are sexually repressed which is no better in my opinion.
      Morality is a personal choice after all you can be moral sexually and immoral in other ways all at the same time.
      PS:
      They sell manga in bookstores in Piccadilly Circus where children and families frequent.

  • Yolo

    Whatever helps you sleep at night.

  • Elizabeth of England

    I’m sorry to point it out, but you appear you have some form of hatred towards Japan. Would it not be more sensible to return to the USA, the country in which you appear to be very fond of?

    As for the issue of age of consent, Japan shares a very similar system as England and Wales does. Statutory, the age of consent is thirteen, as it is with the United Kingdom, however, further law implemented at lower levels (i.e. prefecture government) of Government have raised the age of consent to generally be around the age of seventeen in Japan. In the political structure of the United States, you could compare this to the “Federal Level” law stating it is illegal to make sexual advances to any persons under the age of thirteen, whereas the “State Level” legislation would raise that bar to the age of seventeen years old. In England and Wales, it is written in the common law, however, that is an entirely separate system which is irrelevant to the discussion.

    I would also like to add that age of consent is a very outdated concept, and it is common in the developed world for persons to completely ignore this concept. Research suggests that in the United States, parts of Europe, and parts of Oceania, over eighty percent of young persons have engaged in sexual intercourse. Data on teenage pregnancy (of persons between the age of 15 and 19) also rate Japan and South Korea as the two with the lowest rate, which can simply be translated into Japan and South Korea have a generally less sexually active teenage population.

    However, I would like to point out that that latter section is entirely speculation based on research data, and is not the point of this reply. The point of this reply was to simply clear up misconceptions of Japan’s Age of Consent. You must remember that the foundation of most modern countries are based on the laws of the United Kingdom, and therefore although they may functionally differ, they share many common elements, and for the layman who does not understand the legal system, there can be understandings, and from these misunderstandings, misconceptions.

    • blondein_tokyo

      Why do people like you always suggest that non-Japanese have no right to criticize Japan, no matter how deserved the criticism is? For your information, I’ve spent over half of my life in Japan, and I criticize it every single day- just as I also criticize my country of origin, as well as other countries. In fact, I criticize any country where I see injustices and inequalities and wrongs taking place.

      Interestingly enough, when I criticized my country of origin I was told by someone that I had no right to criticize it because I didn’t live there anymore.

      It’s completely nonsensical.

  • 3ddie

    What Japan needs is a modern leader that can break from the chains holding it back, a good way to start would be to modernize/simplify Japanese and to allow more immigrants to that country.
    I visited Japan in July for a month, as a world traveller, first time in Japan, I was so surprised by its beauty, and how nice the people are. The protocol and traditions are amazing, the beauty of the Japanese woman is incredible.
    That said, I think that there’s too many limitations to immigration, Japan should be welcoming to more foreigners, this would invigorate the economy, add more young people and energy to its increasingly older population.
    The complexity of its language is also another barrier, I met people that lived in Japan for over 20 years who were still not able to communicate fluently. This is a problem, and obviously most people learn English.

  • Ian

    The author asks, “What has gone wrong with us? What have we done to ourselves?” The answer is hidden in the author’s own words: “In old Japan, marriage was essentially a device to produce family heirs. That done, husbands typically pursued love, eros and romance in the licensed pleasure quarters while wives seethed at home in silent frustration.” In fact, nothing has changed over the years, according to evolutionary psychology. All great apes, including us, are not monogamous lifetime pair bonders. Only the lowest species of great ape (Gibbons) pair bonds for life with the same partner. All other great apes either rape various females (orangutans), have harems (gorillas), or are promiscuous (chimps and bonobos). Why? Neurochemistry holds the answer. Animals that pair bond for life have a “bonding” neurotransmitter called “oxytocin” in abundance. For example, breast-feeding human mothers have oxytocin activated. In relationship therapy in Germany, for another example, therapists allow couples to sniff oxytocin vials in order to stimulate bonding. Unfortunately, this practice is not approved in most other nations.

  • Cecilia Flynn

    Excellent commentary and much appreciated.

  • Nick Ronin

    Always a treat when an article pushes an institution with a greater than 60% failure rate. Marriage only looks good when you see one side of it. Go behind closed doors and you will see the other part. The one that will make you glad you aren’t in their situation. Yes, it does work for some. But for those who are constantly miserable, always complaining and whining, or trying to live vicariously through some other single person, it does not come across as something to be desired. The grass is always greener on the other side until you are the one in charge of mowing it.

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