More marital arts practice required
TOKYO - Japanese people just aren't getting enough action in the
bedroom, an expert says, warning that the lack of amour is leading
to a baby shortage.
"Japanese people simply aren't having sex," Dr Kunio Kitamura,
director of the Japan Family Planning Association, said in the
Japan Times.
A survey of 936 people showed 31 per cent had not had sex for more
than a month "for no particular reason".
"As much as subsidies and welfare programmes are important,
sexlessness is a critical issue in this problem."
Japan's fertility rate - the average number of children a woman
bears in her lifetime - fell to an all-time low of 1.25 children
last year. Demographers say a rate of 2.1 is needed to stop the
population falling.
Japan came last among 41 nations in an bedroom poll last year, with
lovers having sex 45 times a year compared to a global average of
103 times a year.
Kitamura said that while many men in workaholic Japan are simply
too "stressed out" to have enough energy for sex, many other
couples simply do not have sex regularly. In the survey, 44 per
cent of the people felt that having a relationship was
"tiresome".
Kitamura's advice? Couples should talk more. "Ultimately, it's
interactions with the opposite sex that bring out the inevitable
animal instinct in us."