“The 200 women a year who seek help at a clinic in the Tokyo suburbs have not had sex with their husbands in up to 20 years, and some never, according to Kim Myong-gan, who runs the clinic. ‘The women who come to see me love their husbands and aren’t looking for a divorce,’ he told the Guardian. ‘The problem is that their husbands lose interest in sex or don’t want sex from the start. Many men think of their wives as substitute mothers, not as women with emotional and sexual needs.’ Mr Kim’s short-term solution is unconventional. After an initial 20,000 yen (£100) counselling session, he produces photographs of 45 men, mostly professionals in their 40s, with whom the women are invited to go on dates and then, in almost all cases, arrange regular assignations in hotel rooms. Mr Kim dismissed charges that his service was little more than a male prostitution ring. ‘The men volunteer and pay half the hotel and restaurant bills, so legally there is absolutely nothing wrong with it,’ he said… The divorce rate has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, with more women blaming their sexually inactive, as opposed to sexually errant, husbands for break-ups. ‘The men love their companies; they live for work,’ Mr Kim said. ‘Men don’t even think it is a problem if they don’t have sex with their wives. They have pornography and the sex industry to take care of their needs, but their wives have nowhere to go. They just suffer in silence.’” —Guardian Unlimited (UK)

It is hard to believe that the words “men” and “sexually inactive” can ever justly be paired together in a single sentence. What men are sexually inactive? It may be that they are sexually inactive with their wives. Or it may be that they are inactive with other people. But sexually inactive altogether? Somehow that’s like saying a man is nutritionally inactive. Look, men eat. Men fuck. If they’re “inactive,” what that really means is that they’re too busy with hookers or porn or the palms of their hands to be bothered with their spouses.

Which is not to say that there’s not some weird trend emerging over there in Japan. It may be the land of the rising sun, but it’s demonstrably the land of the sinking birthrate as well. As this story details, government in Japan has begun offering incentives to counter the “demographic disaster” of a record-low birthrate. But does a sinking birthrate necessarily indicate a sinking national libido? It hardly seems likely. In fact, if for some reason Japan was really undergoing an unnatural shrinkage of the libido, services such as Mr. Kim’s wouldn’t be necessary.

If anything, it’s hard not to think that services such as Mr. Kim’s represent a reaction precisely to the larger trends that currently shape sexuality. Mores are loose. Porn is ubiquitous. Prostitution — and perhaps more significantly, new forms of quasi-prostitution — are rampant, particulary in Japan. It is not difficult for men to explore sexual alternatives outside their marriage, and consequently that leaves many wives in the lurch. As these wives accumulate in numbers and as their voices begin to be heard, expect to see many more such services as Mr. Kim’s. Why not? Women need to be satisfied too, and if it’s not the husbands doing the satisfying, then by all means the women should look elsewhere.

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