Japan faces a different kind of crisis

blind guardian said:

45% of Japanese women aged 16-24 are ‘not interested in or despise sexual contact’. More than a quarter of men feel the same way.
Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" – and it's partly the government's fault.
A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex

Japan rules. I suppose this will mean more high-quality horror manga like those by Junji Ito

On the other hand, i suppose the characteristic porn (mostly the hand-drawn one, termed hentai) is partly to blame for this estrangement. Also their status as the sole country to ever have been hit by atomic weapons should be playing a role, albeit a less direct one.

You can discuss what you think of Japan's particular human-relations crisis presented in the article. I hope things will get better, although that country has been hit both with the threat of a major recession and an actual nuclear reactor accident which seems to have not become irrelevant even by now. I hope they will rise up again and provide more cool art, along with human conditions for their own people.

Kyriakos said:

On the other hand, i suppose the characteristic porn (mostly the hand-drawn one, termed hentai) is partly to blame for this estrangement.

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Porn causes people to have less sex?

strijder20 said:

Porn causes people to have less sex?

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Well, it could, when it is about somewhat nasty plotlines that hentai used to have back when i (entirely by chance, and just once, obviously ) happened to look into it.

Well, I don't know.

Japan has one of the more high-density populations.

But beyond that I don't know what the explanation could be.

Every country has a different history and characteristics, and what leads any one population to go in a particular direction, compared with another, isn't readily apparent.

Except that, in general, increasing prosperity leads to a lower birth rate.

They need to introduce abstinence-only sex education. That should do the trick.

My initial hypothesis would be that animal instincts are dulled when there is no real pressure to survive, and this is just the start of a first world wide phenomenon.

This is what happens when you have fake sex with your mother game shows.

Darkflight said:

My initial hypothesis would be that animal instincts are dulled when there is no real pressure to survive, and this is just the start of a first world wide phenomenon.

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^I do not think this is a large part of the reason for this issue in Japan, since other countries have been having a similar level of luxury for large parts of their population for at least as long as Japan has, but do not present a similar image there.
I do agree that higher quality of life can indeed lead to more acute decision-making in regards to issues of relations with other people, and that is very positive. But again i do not think this is mostly what is going on in Japan in regards to the crisis in relationships of this kind.

The instincts are not always something lowly, anyway. They can pretty much be in harmony with the high intellectual parts of one's life. The dichotomy that some parts of human nature are pretty much base and others are really refined, is not a good one, and i am of the view that in the same individual all behavior (which involves thought/emotion to some degree) can be as refined as he/she feels good with. And Japan surely is more introverted as a nation than most other rich ones, so they are bound to be tending to achieve more refined lifestyles (again something very positive).

Their culture is clearly centered on ideas of impossible beauty though, and had been since the Meiji era (probably long before it as well). All the accounts i have read of that era of Japan are deeply focused on its art presenting beautiful female forms, and patterns of harmony and pleasant silence of introversion, along with outbreaks of extreme violence as in the traditions of the samurai and their code of honor. Japan is very different from the European-based or European-born cultures, although it moved along with them since ww2, despite there being many political movements (rising from figures of art, like Mishima, or Tanizaki) to resist westernisation of its culture.

@Forma: Didn't know such shows existed.

I saw this Vice Documentary a few days ago on the subject:

<snip>

Worth a watch I think, very interesting. It certainly backs up the OP's article.

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How does this impact the used panty vending machine industry in Japan?

hmm



That is just too creepy. A bow-tie?

TheLastOne36 said:

I saw this Vice Documentary a few days ago on the subject:

<snip>

Worth a watch I think, very interesting. It certainly backs up the OP's article.

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Well. I watched it.

Now I wonder why I did.

-----

So, the conclusion is: women have simply realized that getting married and having children is a bad idea?

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The stereotype of Japanese people as being really weird and having strange sexual fetishes - ala hentai and all that - while something I myself find entertaining, is not really that true. Most of the "weird" Japanese stuff you hear about, the majority of Japanese people would also find weird. ANyhow, I really find it hard to believe that hentai, and the whole anime-manga-what have you pop culture it's part of, to be a major reason for why Japan's currently facing this crisis. Frankly, most Japanese people care about anime and manga as much as the average American cares about Hollywood - yes, it's an important part of pop culture, but most aren't completely obsessed with it. Sure, you hear stories about Japanese guys who have 'relationships' with fake characters, but I am certain they're a ridiculously small minority. The hentai/anime/manga/what have you, if it even is something that must be considered, is, in my opinion, only a symptom of the problem, rather than the problem itself.

I think Japan's problem, as a few posters seemed to hint at, is simply is that it's a developed country. People marry later, people have less kids, etc. It's nothing unique to Japan. It's happening in America, in Europe, in Korea, heck, I wouldn't be surprised if elements of it are already happening in China. When women marry later and want to have less kids and also have kids later, they get more opportunities for careers and hobbies and other things. Then some of them come to the conclusion that marriage and kids aren't that necessary for a fulfilling life, and are less willing to go that way.

20 years in economic stagnation, with no problems other than "it's as good as it should be" with an aging population...

They're just collectively depressed. There's not a lot of room for hope for the individual, and there's nothing to fight against or to fear to bring people together into an anti-something purpose.

People just gave up caring. What's the point.

What's the point of having children? Well, there isn't any. Unless a family is so desperately poor it needs them as an asset they can sell in some way.

Shouldn't a child be valuable in its own right?

And if two people find meaning and value in each other, isn't it natural for them to want a child in their lives, for them to nurture and cherish?

Borachio said:

What's the point of having children? Well, there isn't any. Unless a family is so desperately poor it needs them as an asset they can sell in some way.

Shouldn't a child be valuable in its own right?

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What's the point as in the idiom that expresses the kind of fatigued apathy that comes with seeing something bigger and more difficult than anything you can manage, and yet it's not even worth fighting against because it's just not bad enough.


These kids grew up in a national luke-warm bath. You're too cold to get out but you hate every second of it.

I guess there could be some truth to the term Turning Japanese.

There's not a lot of room for hope for the individual, and there's nothing to fight against or to fear to bring people together into an anti-something purpose.

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Are these the only things that give people a point: struggle or fear?


Link to video.

It's a euphemism for what, again?

Well send them girls to Sweden - their offspring will be taller and broader, better equiped, more stupid but able to grow a beard at 18.

cybrxkhan said:

The stereotype of Japanese people as being really weird and having strange sexual fetishes - ala hentai and all that - while something I myself find entertaining, is not really that true. Most of the "weird" Japanese stuff you hear about, the majority of Japanese people would also find weird. ANyhow, I really find it hard to believe that hentai, and the whole anime-manga-what have you pop culture it's part of, to be a major reason for why Japan's currently facing this crisis. Frankly, most Japanese people care about anime and manga as much as the average American cares about Hollywood - yes, it's an important part of pop culture, but most aren't completely obsessed with it. Sure, you hear stories about Japanese guys who have 'relationships' with fake characters, but I am certain they're a ridiculously small minority. The hentai/anime/manga/what have you, if it even is something that must be considered, is, in my opinion, only a symptom of the problem, rather than the problem itself.

I think Japan's problem, as a few posters seemed to hint at, is simply is that it's a developed country. People marry later, people have less kids, etc. It's nothing unique to Japan. It's happening in America, in Europe, in Korea, heck, I wouldn't be surprised if elements of it are already happening in China. When women marry later and want to have less kids and also have kids later, they get more opportunities for careers and hobbies and other things. Then some of them come to the conclusion that marriage and kids aren't that necessary for a fulfilling life, and are less willing to go that way.

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While people from richer countries are having less children, this presumably does not stopping them from having as much scoodlypooping - According to the article, the Japanese simply do not like intimacy with one another.