“Nothing is happening with depressing regularity between Japanese men and women these days. Marriages, births and hanky-panky are all spiraling downward with troubling implications for the nation’s future: A sagging birthrate means that fewer working-age people will be around to support a growing population of elderly; a social crisis looms. Only in Japan would a popular weekly newsmagazine deem it necessary to exhort the nation’s youth to abstain from sexual abstinence: ‘Young people, don’t hate sex,’ AERA magazine pleaded last month in a report detailing a precarious drop in sales of condoms and in business at Japan’s rent-by-the-hour ‘love hotels.’” — USA Today (US)

(Thanks to hludens for the link.)

Do you remember that 1980s song by the Vapors — the one where the guy sings “I think I’m turning Japanese” over and over? Back then there was a popular rumor about the song having homosexual implications. To “turn Japanese” was to go gay. It’s hard to say where that rumor came from, since there is nothing obvious in the lyrics that make it a queer anthem. In fact, the guy also sings “no sex, no drugs, no wine, no women / No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it’s dark.” And that would seem a lot closer to the truth nowadays — according to this news article, there isn’t much sex going on in Japan. According to various surveys, there is a nationwide recession in sex, marriage, and births.

But then when you look at those stats, that phrase even — “sex, marriage, and births” — you realize that the story is really a bit more subtle than that. What you’re witnessing in Japan is a decline in one type of sex: the old-fashioned get-married have-kids type of sex. Other forms of sex appear to be prospering there in the land of the rising sun, especially cybersex and prostitution. There is still plenty of sex in Japan, even if half of it is masturbation.

And you have to suspect that, in this regard, Japan is not really undergoing a libidinal recession but is rather leading the way into the future. Many social forces — the financial independence of women; the emergence of interactive technology; the advances of reproductive technology, which make it unnecessary to have sex to have babies; the evolution in sexual mores and the greater acceptance of alternative sexualities; etc. — are colluding to transform sex into something new. In some cases it might make sex, or at least old-fashioned missionary-position-only sex, obsolete. In other cases it might just liberate sex from reproduction and leave in its place an atavistic desire for pleasure and orgasm, which can be gratified in any variety of ways.

Either way, it’s probably a pretty good bet that, sexually, we all will be turning Japanese, sooner or later.

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