The Sexless Marriage In Japan

Japan's virgin wives turn to sex volunteers

Lustless matches put country on brink of demographic disaster

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Monday April 4, 2005
The Guardian

Like many Japanese women, Junko waited until her early 30s to get married. When she and her fiance, an employee of a well-known firm, decided to tie the knot, she set her sights on making a home, putting away some money and starting a family.

Fifteen years later, Junko and her husband are childless. It is not that they cannot have children; it is just that they have never had sex.

The sexless marriage is one of several reasons why experts fear Japan is on the verge of a demographic disaster.

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."

The number of married couples is in rapid decline. In 2000 almost 70% of men and 54% of women between 25 and 29 were unmarried. That bodes ill for the birthrate, as conservative Japanese society frowns upon having children outside marriage.

A survey of 600 women found that 26% had not had sex with their husbands in the past year.

"We are sort of room-mates rather than a married couple," one 31-year-old man, who had not had sex with his wife for two years, told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

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."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,73...00.html#obvious

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This is not the first article I've read recently on this phenomenon. Is society becomming so fast and furious that we no longer have either the time or the desire to remain romantically involved with our spouse (the person we were romantically committed to years ago)?

gah, but isn't this in an area were they still have to many births that they don't know what to do with? How does that happen than!?!??!?

No Dragonboy...not in Japan. That would be China. Japan is quite the opposite. The men are married to their jobs there and it's nothing for them to work 15 hours a day without batting an eyelash. In Japan, the birthrate is so low, that women's clinics actually compete to get clients in there to have their baby. They have all kinds of nice benefits for the mothers. It's almost like resorts competing for your business. Plus, with more couples waiting until their 30's to get married, it's less likely that the wife will get pregnant anyway, because she's no longer in her prime child bearing years.

Gah! I should learn to keep my mouth shuT!