About 1 in 5 people have experienced physical abuse from their partners while dating, the highest proportion ever, while 1 in 4 spouses said the same, according to a government survey published Tuesday.

In a Cabinet Office survey conducted late last year of 2,950 people, 18% of the respondents said they had been subject to physical abuse by the people they were going out with, rising from 12.6% in the previous survey in 2020.

Breaking this down according to gender, 22.7% of female respondents said they had been physically abused by their partner while 12% of male respondents said the same.

As for spousal abuse, 27.5% of female respondents said their husbands physically abused them while 22% of male respondents said their wives did, according to the survey.

Among those who experienced physical abuse from their spouses, 12.6% reported that they felt that their lives were in danger.

“Abuse, including sexual, is a serious violation of human rights and must never be tolerated. Based on this survey’s results, we plan to get to the root of the problem and act accordingly,” Ayuko Kato, state minister in charge of gender equality, said in a news conference Tuesday.

Stalking has also become a prominent issue. A record 14% of women who took part in the survey said they had experienced being stalked while 5.7% of men said the same. Ex-partners made up almost a quarter of the stalkers, followed by people from work (21.6%) and from school (17.9%).

Following last year’s revision of the law regarding what constitutes rape — nonconsensual sex is now also defined as rape — the latest survey also included questions about "nonconsensual sexual intercourse.” In the 2020 survey, the phrase “coercive sexual intercourse” was used.

According to the survey, 4.7% of the respondents said that they were victims of nonconsensual sexual intercourse. Broken down by gender, 8.1% of female respondents said they were such victims while 0.7% of male respondents gave the same answer.

Around 40% said that they had experienced nonconsensual sex when they were in their 20s while around 20% reported having experienced nonconsensual sexual acts between the ages of 15 and 19. Another 15% said that they were in elementary school when the abuse happened.

The survey, conducted every three years since 1999, gathered data between November and December from 5,000 individuals age 18 to 59 across Japan. A total of 59% of respondents gave valid responses.

Up until 2020, the survey had been conducted on individuals age 20 and above. The latest survey is the first to include data from respondents as young as 18 years old, following the lowering of the legal age of adulthood to 18 in 2022.