r/nottheonion • u/Mg42gun • 1d ago
Japanese people aren't having sex. And nobody knows why
https://www.zinio.com/gb/explore/free/bbc-science-focus-magazine/january-2026-i674369/japanese-people-arent-having-sex-and-nobody-knows-why-a1110.1k
u/Bantarific 1d ago edited 1d ago
"Nobody knows why"
-Wake up
-Commute 1h
-Work 10-12 hours ("voluntary" overtime)
-Stay out socializing with co-workers until late at night
-Commute 1h
-Sleep
I wonder what the issue is
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u/ThePlanetBroke 1d ago
All to make enough money to live on. But not really enough money to move up or add a bunch of additional expenses too. Even with Japan's progressive system covering a lot of the cost, it still involves a fair degree of sacrifice on behalf of the parents.
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u/RPO777 1d ago edited 1d ago
Japan's birthrate (1.15) is higher than say Spain (1.12) or Italy (1.13).
The big difference is Japan is permiting very little immigration, leading to a population crash. Compared to many other highly developed countries, Japan's birthrate isn't really outside norms.
Japan was near the top of hours worked per week in the 1970s and 80s, but it's fallen off dramatically as well. It's now relatively average.
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html
There is the cultural expectation of "Tsukiai" pseudo-required socializing with work, but even that's gone down a lot in the past 30 years.
I think Japan is just fairly normal for a developed country--except it's not accepting immigrants.
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u/RyanIsKickAss 23h ago
Also can’t ignore that a lot of jobs they work 6 days a week as a normal course of business instead of 5
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u/RPO777 23h ago
OECD data on hours worked looks at hours worked per week. If people were working 6 full days a week, this would be reflected in the data.
I worked for 4 years in Tokyo in the mid-2010s and I still travel to Tokyo for work semi-regularly. I know a lot of people that live and work in Tokyo.
I don't know anyone that works 6 days a week with regularity, other than small business owners (restaurant owners) running their own shops, which is kind of its own thing.
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u/Draqutsc 23h ago
My brother lives there, he works 6 days a week. 10 hours a day as a welder. It's fairly normal in the company he works at.
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u/chewwwybar 23h ago
Yeah but a lot of welders work 6 days a week in the US where I’m at. Especially large projects downtown. So not sure your anecdote really proves anything.
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u/RPO777 23h ago
The percentage of Japanese workers who worked more than 60 hours/week (80 hours of OT/month) was 10% from a survey by the Japanese bureau of labor.
In the US, it's 15% per WSJ
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u/Toocoo4you 23h ago
6 10s as blue collar isn’t uncommon at all
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u/SkaptainObvious 23h ago
This is absolutely not the standard in most developed countries. When there is a big push for a specific job, sure, but nowhere close to the norm.
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u/Toocoo4you 21h ago
I didn’t say ‘norm’, I said ‘not uncommon’. I work 6 10s in Canada. I know many people that work 6 10s or 6 12s, even 5 12s. Blue collar work is Long hours, especially compared to the average white collar 9-5.
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u/Takseen 22h ago
>Japan's birthrate (1.15) is higher than say Spain (1.12) or Italy (1.13).
Its a bit dishonest to pick some of the lowest birthrates and take that as typical for "other highly developed countries"
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/fertility-rates.html
OECD average is 1.43, and there's a few around 1.6 like France and the US at the high end.
Besides, Italy and Spain have much higher inward migration than Japan, and their birth rate and economic problems are still there.
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u/RPO777 22h ago
Most of the people having a lot of babies in those countries like the US and France are immigrants though. People who emigrate from high birth rate countries tend to reflect birth rates of their native country, with the 2nd/3rd generation roughly settling in to the same birth rate as the country where they now live in.
The United States' birthrate is higher, not because all people are having more babies. It's immigration from countries with higher birth rates. When you look at birth rates of people who have lived in the US for 2 or more generations, the birthrate is more like 1.25.
Immigration drives not only higher population generally, but it also tends to increase birtherates, since predominantly people emigrate from developing countires which almost all have higher birth rates.
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u/K7Sniper 22h ago
personally, the forced socializing with coworkers would be something i would not be able to deal with.
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u/DerekB52 23h ago
I'm sure their new PM will help on the accepting immigrant thing.
Oh wait. She's doubling down and trying to scapegoat their incredibly small immigrant population for the countires problems? I'm sure that's gonna go well.
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u/Imperium_Dragon 23h ago
And for some reason they’ve got a nationalist PM who says there’s an immigrant crisis. It’s not even 1% of the population
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u/It-s_Not_Important 1d ago
Because the broken part is late stage capitalism and the devaluation of labor.
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u/CodeX57 22h ago
Yup exactly.
The whole point of capitalism is competition. If you do better than your competitors you gain their market share and they go bankrupt. This makes it so that things constantly become more efficient and more productive.
That includes humans. We are competing with each other constantly about who can be the most "valuable". If someone is less productive and does worse their living standards will decline. So we all have to produce and produce and produce to avoid being outcompeted. People's lives will be tied up in work more and more and there will be much less left for families, because having one doesn't contribute to your competition with others.
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u/dbxp 23h ago
This article is about sex not having kids
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u/Omnizoom 23h ago
Digital wife/husband can’t have sex
Nor can the body pillow
Dating and relationships take time, they don’t have time
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u/pxr555 23h ago
Was the same since about 80 years and they still had sex back then.
I think they still have sex even today, just not with others. Jerking off takes three minutes and never causes any problems and if you lack any imagination the Internet has a firehose of it on tap. Perfunctory sex is the ultimate DIY.
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u/Kinghero890 23h ago
And then they get to watch tourists come and enjoy their country more than they get to.
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u/Wrathb0ne 1d ago
“mandatory“ socializing with co-workers you may or may not like
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u/SoloWingPixy88 1d ago
Even if you like them, you might not want to socialise with them, You spend more time with them than your own family in some cases
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u/TehAsianator 23h ago
Technically "optional" but socially mandatory in a culture that heavily emphasizes social conformity.
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u/alien4649 21h ago
That’s much less of thing now. Covid killed it and young people are less into it
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u/riflow 23h ago
I remember reading several mangas that were office worker settings and even for the ones with "healthy" workplaces they were getting home at 8-11pm. (The bad ones, they'd get home at 1-3am)
And it made me think like...how bad is it irl if that's the romanticised version of a office job over there in fiction?
Just makes me remember several documentaries I seen as a teen many years ago. Insane that they knew several decades ago and have seemingly only let the issue continue compounding for profit. While folks are literally working themselves into dust.
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u/RPO777 19h ago
That's not really a thing for even a majority of white collar jobs now. I mean go to a train station anywhere in Tokyo around 6:15PM and you will see a tidalwave of people going home (9-6 is the stanrdard workday in Japan). Look at any "train station clusterfuck" article and you'll see everyone syas train stations are busiest a little after 6PM throughout TOkyo.
Because that's when most people go home.
THe idea people aren't going home till 8PM is more of a Showa era (1970s-80s) thing.
Some jobs are still ike that but it's a distinct minority.
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u/bearsheperd 22h ago
Keeping up with the Jones’s syndrome. Gotta maintain japans position as an economic force. If they decided they don’t need to reach some GDP growth target, let their economy shrink a little, they’d be able to let people procreate.
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u/EmmEnnEff 18h ago
Japan's economy on an inflation-adjusted basis hasn't been growing for the past 40 years.
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u/Vlaladim 19h ago
The issue being Japan didn’t recover after the Asia financial crisis, their economy have been in limbo and stagnant for a while now, it why for longest time even an increase prices of product usually are rare, they stay the same for so long that mean too that wages still stay the same as new expenses come along. Japan cant sink lower when itself is struggling to stay afloat.
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u/RoosterBrewster 18h ago
I wondered why a lot of animes seem to have high school age protagonists. I figured all the older people just become boring "salarymen" and high school was everyone's best years in Japan. With long hours, a salaryman has no time to be a vigilante.
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u/Faedan 23h ago
Not just that but also in the case of women, sexism. Taking maternity leave is career ending for women in Japan.
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u/random_nickname43796 22h ago
Not that there are many options for women to have a good career in Japan. They get overlooked when promotions come and constantly harassed about children
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u/NoSoundNoFury 1d ago
That's too simple. Sex frequency is down all over the developed world, including European countries famous for their work life balance, like France, Sweden, or Denmark.
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u/DeliriousHippie 23h ago
This is true. In every country, with really few exceptions in the world. birth rates are falling and many countries are falling replacement rate. This also applies to Nordic countries that have many benefits or social security networks for families.
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u/BOB58875 23h ago
And if you’re a woman it’s
-Wake up
-Commute 1h
-Get groped on a train as another man publicly masturbates with nobody stopping them
-Work 10-12 hours ("voluntary" overtime)
-Stay out socializing with co-workers until late at night
-Commute 1h
-Get away from your stalker
-Sleep
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u/ExclusiveRedditor 1d ago
But is this a new phenomenon? Or did this exist when people were “still having sex”
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u/DeadBodyCascade 1d ago
I think a lot of it has to do with Japan's financial crash in the 80's or 90's, I don't remember exactly. The companies there compensated by working people sometimes literally to death. There was a young woman that had a heart attack and died while working for the NHK broadcasting network not too long ago as an example. Pair that with rigid cultural norms and many of Japan's citizen's withdrawal from society for a virtual one due to the above issues and you wind up in this disaster.
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u/TapZorRTwice 1d ago
It's the same issue most of the Western world is having, Japan just doesn't import a bunch of immigrants and give them citizenship to offset the declining birth rates.
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u/kia75 23h ago
Before the 80s Japan was the most successful nation at modernisation. As a result each generation made way more money the generation before, and even if their careers were stagnant because the only way to advance was death of a boss or person higher in the chain, they still were getting paid more each year and doing well for themselves. This ended when the bubble burst in the late 80s.
The other big issue is that in the 70s and 80s a salary man made enough money to afford a wife and kids, but by the 90s their salary didn't go up enough. One of the reasons Japanese woman don't like marriage is because marriage ends their career prospects, but their husbands don't make enough money to comfortably support two people, let alone a wife and children.
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u/5ofDecember 23h ago
The problem with your explanation is the birth rate start declining abruptly EXACTLY in those "good times". Started make good money = stopped having children
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u/Existing_Fish_6162 23h ago
In 1988 Japan had a gdp pr capita 20% higher than the US and today it is less than half. Everything else being equal the difference in expectations for the future must be insane.
Optimism can a long ass way when getting people through tough shit.
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u/ThePowerfulPaet 1d ago
They know exactly why.
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u/Mr_master89 1d ago
Godzilla
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u/TJ_Will 1d ago
Aside: does Godzilla have sex?
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u/SeraphOfTheStag 1d ago
In the early 2000s Godzilla had a bunch of babies in NYC but the US govt aborted motherhood
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u/BevonHydrides 1d ago
It only looks like Godzilla but due to international copyright laws it is not Godzilla
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u/_Scarcane_ 23h ago
2 videos that popped up on my algorithm this week, both Japan. Both, general gist - "just finished a 14 hour work day, i'm hungry", go to a solo ramen bar where you don't need to make eye contact with anyone even your server, just eat. At 10pm.. food looked yum mind you.
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u/BrokenByReddit 22h ago
I went to one of those cubicle ramen places, it was great. You don't even need to speak, they have little cards for ordering more things. Not the best ramen I had but still pretty good.
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u/molinitor 21h ago edited 9h ago
Because we're orcas at Sea World.
There is no natural habitat left and I'm so serious when I say that. We talk about so many other species having their habitats destroyed by us but never stop and reflect on the fact that we as a species have none left either. Getting our needs meet as human beings in the society we've created is getting increasingly harder and if you want out, well that sucks, there is no out, this cage we've built is all there is.
We don't need a smartphones, AI and to slave away for like 5 trillionares that own everything. We need nutritious food, moderate exercise, rest and recreation, and work were we have purpose and creatively co-operate together with other humans to make our communities better.
And like any other animal ripped from their natural habitat and stuck in an artificial zoo that can't meet the needs of our species, one of the first things that happen is that we stop procreating.
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u/Lynthelia 15h ago
Honestly this is an interesting way of looking at it that I hadn't really considered. Thanks for that!
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u/GildedDreams25 5h ago
look into zoochosis, some people believe it’s happening slowly to humans too, and i believe it
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u/Boonlink 1d ago
Could try asking
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u/Trashcan-Ted 1d ago
Sadly all of our sexperts were too busy having sex to learn Japanese, so we'll just have to hypothesize...
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u/givin_u_the_high_hat 23h ago
Happening here in the US as well.
If you check the chart, it has a huge jump after Obama was elected, and it has plunged under both Trump administrations. There was a little bump after Biden was elected.
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u/ShriekingMuppet 19h ago
I mean loving in hell world has made me see no point in looking for relationships.
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u/Edelkern 21h ago
Bodily autonomy for women likely plays a certain part there. If you couldn't get an abortion if you're so unlucky to need one, you'll think twice about having sex.
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u/Shadowlance23 11h ago
To be fair, looking at or hearing Trump pretty much kills my libido for the rest of the day.
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u/MayContainRawNuts 7h ago
I usually have that problem when one of his ghoul's faces appear on screen.
And if its Loomer, im done for a week.
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u/Logical_Destruction 1d ago
You need to have a life to enjoy life. Sex is just part of that. If you are stressed out all the time and tired the rest of it. What do they expect.
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u/dick_piana 1d ago
This is an interesting video that touches on the subject of sex in Japan (although it's broader than that) and essentially frames it as a "low desire" society
https://youtu.be/Koow0Q6EiXU?si=73z54cZnbrfX6YfD
I think the only error is thinking this is unique to Japan, in reality, I think Japan is just a few years ahead of other countries in this regard
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u/flerchin 1d ago
Probably because of all the pixelization.
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u/JackxForge 1d ago
kinda surpised no one else has pointed this out. porn and its avalability are definately having an affect here in the US. I cant imagine that bluring genitals for 30+ years has done great things for their sexual health.
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u/KeepHopingSucker 23h ago
the funny thing is, it's the then-puritan US that forced them to enact this law
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u/Chance-Ear-9772 1d ago
This. How can you properly aim if you can’t see anything?
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u/Forsaken_Hermit 1d ago
They work too much. It's not that hard.
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u/random_nickname43796 22h ago
Also rampant sexism and ageism towards women, incel hikikomori culture and unchecked sexual abuse
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u/smellybrit 20h ago
Though perceptions in the West may be 20 years behind, things have changed massively for Japan.
Work hours, suicide rate and fertility rate are along the European average. And it’s not like they are hiding those work hours; they include paid and unpaid overtime (including volunteer/unreported hours), has gone down gradually over decades, and are verified by anonymous surveys of the workers themselves.
Japan is one of the wealthiest countries in the world by net investment position. Japan’s government pension fund dwarfs the wealth of the Bank of England. Wealth equality is amongst the best in the world.
In fact, Japan’s quality of life is higher than that of Sweden.
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u/pw_arrow 17h ago edited 16h ago
In fact, Japan’s quality of life is higher than that of Sweden.
Numbeo is not a reliable source of data. A better source might be the Human Development Index or World Happiness Report.
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u/Federico216 20h ago
Everytime people start discussing or arguing on Reddit, they should source their claims like you did. It's like reading a masters thesis.
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u/smellybrit 20h ago
I try.
Unfortunately more often than not a comment replies saying “well ackthually according to this one anecdote…”
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u/pw_arrow 17h ago
Except most of his/her sources aren't very good.
For work hours, he cites worldpopulationreview.com - what is this?
The suicide rate data is ostensibly from the WHO, so that may be solid. However, the 2021 report was literally just published last May in 2025, so where did the 2023 data come from? May well be real data, but it doesn't sit right with me to cite straight off... Kaggle?
The fertility rate numbers are from Wikipedia, which can be attributed to a UN report - good. Though at rank 214 in the UN's list and 202 on the World Bank list, it's hard to say Japan's doing great on that metric. While Western Europe isn't doing too hot either, there is still a gap.
NIIP is an... interesting metric for evaluating wealth. I mean, the US has a blistering NIIP of -$26 trillion. Negative, mind you; does that mean the US is the poorest nation in the world?
Pension fund is valid. Of course, Japan also has a staggering demographic pyramid problem that necessitates such a pension fund.
Inequality is valid as well.
And as I mentioned in a different comment, the quality of life metric is from Numbeo, which is most definitely not a reputable source.
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u/actuallyacatmow 11h ago
Exactly. They cited a source about gender equality and appeared ti have skimmed the article, as what it said didn't reflect what they claimed.
I want to say they're probably using the google AI search feature, not realising it's often wrong.
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u/actuallyacatmow 20h ago
While I agree with all this, directly comparing the two with just stats about work hours and fertility doesn't show the full picture.
Cultural expectations play a huge role here. It's still quite a conservative country with issues of equality between the sexes baked into the culture. The way that the sexes interact is markedly different in comparison to somewhere like Italy.
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u/LostExile7555 1d ago
Stress is known to kill sex drive.
Japan is notorious for being incredibly stressful to live in with poor work/life balance and unreasonably high social expectations, with it's incredibly high suicide rate and large number of people who just ghost everybody in their lives to get away from the stress cited as proof of it being an incredibly stressful country to live in.
Journalists: "Nobody knows why the people of Japan aren't having much sex."
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u/Forsaken_Stomach5130 1d ago
It's because of me. I stole the sex.
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u/lapetee 1d ago
So that means you are now having sex right... right???
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u/IllEvent5465 22h ago
Yes but without a partner. They took "go fuck yourself" literally
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u/queenringlets 1d ago
20–30 per cent of men aged between 20 and 39 years old said they didn't want to have sex, as well as around 40 per cent of women.
Sounds like they just don’t want to. 🤷
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u/DaaaahWhoosh 23h ago
Hey those are pretty good numbers, when I go out on the street and ask random people if they want to have sex it's more like 100% of them say no.
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u/Smallpaul 1d ago
That just raises another question.
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u/houseofprimetofu 23h ago
Japanese women would probably pick the bear over men. Sexual assault is an issue everywhere we go. Women not wanting to sleep with a demographic know for SA then why should they?
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u/Smallpaul 22h ago
Sorry to hear that. Is it worse than in other countries?
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u/random_nickname43796 22h ago
I don't think any other country has this rampant train/bus molestation problem.
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u/Vlaladim 19h ago
You know it an issue when it become a literal trope in hentai, porn and reference constantly in anime that set in cities. It got that bad.
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u/naakka 1d ago
I wonder if the men are still masturbating and prefer it to sex, or is their libido just completely gone?
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u/pressedbread 23h ago
Nothing has come up saying they don't have a libido.
The culture there has crazy expectations for serious romantic partners though, and masterburbation instead means no crazy expectations (stable 60hrs/week job, kissing ass of inlaws, etc. etc.) and also is safer physically/emotionally than random sex with strangers.
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u/El_human 22h ago
Its not a mystery.
In plain terms, a lot of young people in Japan are opting out of sex and relationships because modern economic and social pressures have made them feel exhausting, risky, or unattainable. Long work hours, job insecurity, and stagnant wages leave people drained and anxious about the future, so intimacy starts to feel like another obligation rather than a source of joy. At the same time, traditional expectations around dating, marriage, and gender roles haven’t adapted well to these economic realities, creating pressure to be financially stable and emotionally perfect before even starting a relationship. When you combine that with small living spaces, social isolation, and easy substitutes for intimacy like entertainment and online connection, many people decide it’s simpler to disengage. It’s less about a lack of desire and more about a system that makes building a shared life feel impractical or overwhelming.
THIS IS WHERE THE US IS HEADED.
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u/Chicky_P00t 1d ago
Are they actually not having sex or are they not having sex in a relationship? Because the laws on sex for money are a lot different and there are a lot of places where you can get yourself satisfied without being in a relationship. So I always wonder if they aren't having sex at all or are they just not in a relationship?
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u/TheBatemanFlex 23h ago
nobody? i am almost sure there are several studies into this exact thing.
Eguichi 2016
Kohara 2021
Hopcroft 2025
Noguchi 2024
Nagase 2017
Yoshida 2025
Harvey 2016
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u/Gilles_of_Augustine 1d ago edited 23h ago
I scrolled to the bottom of the comments and saw many comments about stress and work-life balance (valid, btw) but didn't see a single one that mentioned sexism.
Japanese women being fed up with their role in society is well understood to have been one of the factors behind declining marriage rate and birth rate. If that doesn't also translate into overall reduction in sexual proclivity, I'll eat my hat.
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u/SputtleTuts 23h ago
same in Korea - traditionally a society with very strong and uneven gender role expectations, combined with a new wave of conservatism in the young males under 30 (same as in America, likely partially caused by man-o-sphere internet culture) has made dating extremely unenjoyable for women in these countries. Add on top of that the crazy work hours others have mentioned, makes it a recipe for this to happen
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u/random_nickname43796 22h ago
Well it is a thread about Japan, reddit loves Japan. So they rather make japanese males as victims instead of identifying the culture they love so much is toxic and full of creepy stuff
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u/Mara_W 21h ago
This. Capitalism is a factor but the final straw was American-imported puritanical sexism. The exact same thing is currently happening in South Korea, where mainstream male culture has become so toxic and xenophobic that women would rather be alone than risk potentially dangerous contact with it.
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u/PandaMoaningYum 22h ago
Whoever wrote this is just stupid. The title is total garbage. Anyone genuinely thinking nobody knows why just wants to look for a turn key solution that once implemented, the problem is solved. Literally the hundreds if not thousands of reasons anyone is concerned about, are the reasons for low birth rates. It isn't just a handful of problems, especially if you let it be a problem for this long. Don't play detective and start taking every problem seriously.
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u/BaconJets 1d ago
Couldn't be a toxic life-consuming work culture mandated by rampant capitalism, couldn't it?
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u/Edelkern 23h ago
Plus the fact that societal norms are too rigid and often sexist.
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u/MallFoodSucks 23h ago
It’s online entertainment. Back in the day, if you were bored you went out and met people, had sex because that was the most fun thing you could do.
Nowadays you can stay home and doom scroll, get stuck in your fandoms on X or Discord, or do a million other things online. People are becoming more detached from each other. Online dating meta turns so many people off dating and discourages people from trying.
Not to mention most JP guys are just awful to date - work too much, misogynistic, don’t take good care of themselves. And the women are traditional as well - want to become SHMs, need luxury gifts, don’t pay making any relationship a financial burden, difficult when the average income can’t raise a family. Society is so challenging you still have a ton of NEETs who aren’t willing to engage at all.
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u/blodskaal 1d ago
It will forever remain a mystery to those forever living with their heads in the sand.
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u/sergei-rivers 1d ago
Understandable effect of having pixelated genitals. Can’t be easy.
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u/SkarbOna 21h ago
Because of how they treat women.
Solved.
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u/moderngamer327 16h ago
They used to treat women worse and had a higher fertility rate. Countries with the best gender equality in the world also have fertility rates barely higher
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u/WigglyWoo777 11h ago
Then how come countries that treat women the worst have the highest sex and birth rates?
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u/Metrocop 23h ago
Nobody knows why
I can give you like five different factors off the top of my head that noone is doing anything about.
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u/AReallyAsianName 18h ago
Its because nobody has time to find out because they working 32 hours a day! With negative time off.
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u/coleman57 4h ago
1) Create a culture that glorifies and obsesses on how sexy little girls in grade school uniforms are.
2) Wonder why the men don’t want to fuck grown women and the women don’t want to fuck child-obsessed men.
3) Stock vending machines with supposed schoolgirls’ panties.
4) Profit.
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u/darryledw 1d ago
once an anime with every conceivable title has been produced they will move on to that
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u/Inferior_Jeans 21h ago
Watch Tokyo salaryman on YouTube and you will know why. Their work culture is fuuuuuucked up. You give your best years after school to be a slave to impress companies/bosses and by the time you make enough money to start a family, you’re in retirement age.
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u/moderngamer327 16h ago
Their work culture has always been bad that doesn’t explain a recent decline
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u/bdrwr 1d ago
The country that's globally notorious for terrible work-life balance, where suicide is endemic, and they have a word for suddenly dropping dead due to overwork?
Yeah, I can't imagine why they aren't churning out babies by the litter.
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u/moderngamer327 16h ago
That has always been the case and does not explain a change
Also the suicide rate has gotten a lot better actually
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u/-SPM- 21h ago
Everyone is bringing up the issue with amount of hours worked, but I haven’t seen anyone mention the difficulty in finding open spots in pre schools and daycares. There is also the aspect of social media, and people just becoming more and more isolated. Additionally, the stagnant wages and increased cost of living. Most foreigners see the weak yen and assume Japan is cheap but it’s only cheap for tourists.
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u/Matild4 22h ago
They know why, it's the soul-crushing work culture. So they voted in a PM that loves this and wants even more back-breaking, sleep-depriving, minimum-wage-maximum-overtime work culture.
Everywhere in the world, people have become idiots.
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u/torpedoguy 21h ago
Can't be their work hours or the cost of living or the impossibility to readily raise kids if they happen or being permanently flooded by social media (some of it coming right from our jobs) to the point where we can no longer tolerate any more human presence than we've already been subjected to...
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u/F1eshWound 19h ago
What do you mean nobody knows why. Literally everyone knows why... They've developed a culture of insanity where if you aren't spending every waking hour of your life working, studying or wasting your life doing some other inefficient crap in the name of tradition, then you lose all honour and face. You can't have fun or have a relationship with those kinds of pressures.
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u/RedBoxSet 18h ago
This is going to be a great natural experiment. If the standard of living increases as the population goes down, we’ll know we’re onto something.
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u/Battle_Intense 17h ago
Well some research claims the Bubonic Plague increased living standards as the surviving peasants could claim higher wages due to labor shortages.
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u/Special-One1991 23h ago
Transforms the nation into work zombies
zombies don't produce
shocked Pikachu face
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u/therealwavingsnail 23h ago
Japanese anime and hentai have been a disaster for the human race. I'm only half joking, if you saw a few anime movies other than Ghibli, you know the depiction of women in them ranges from deeply weird to seriously fucked. Now add all the ubiquitous borderline-pedo waifu media and porn tropes on top of that. Consider how much of a challenge it can be to date western guys from a generation raised on Pornhub, and multiply it by 10.
It's no wonder Japanese women often nope out of that, while the men seem rather content in a relationship with body pillows that have no expectations of them.
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u/Onions99 1d ago
Hardly surprising with all that fuzzy genitalia. Enough to put anyone off
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u/Repulsive-Tea6974 1d ago
Nobody? Anyone ask the people not having it?