-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Why are people no longer having sex in Japan?
- Thread starter Trojita
- Start date
- Status
Korea is in same boat as Japan and porn is banned there.
Maidenpool?
Member
ЯAW;86983330 said:
I just googled it and found out you can watch it on the internet in Korea - you just can't buy it physically and of course you can't make it there.
MaschinenZimmer
Banned
ЯAW;86983330 said:
SNSD is better than most porn anyway.
Maidenpool?
Member
I brought this up yesterday I think, but birth rates aren't generally cyclical. Basically they have been steadily falling across the developed world for a long time.
By the same token, yes, but the reality is that English is taught everywhere in the world to a certain degree of fluency to a point that moving an English based country and integrating there is far simpler than going to an Asian country and feel like part of the culture.
No, What I really mean, is that, while the phonetics aspect of it might be simple, the correct way of spelling out things in order to be part of the culture, is indeed challenging. You would be surprised how many foreigners mis-pronounce phonetics and make them westernised.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_tBv1Pu9ok
Brawly Likes to Brawl
Member
You mean Pitch Accent? Yeah, that's tough to get down, especially if you don't have anybody to practice speaking with.
Korea has lower fertility rate then Japan.
Sato Koiji
Member
These people work themselves to death over there. You tell me after working your hairs off your head you have the energy to please your woman...
Pure lunacy over there!
Pure lunacy over there!
shanshan310
Member
scnr
I am completely baffled at how that translation happened. I.. what...How did they get dumb out of that? This is as confusing as when a Japanese dude pointed at some chick, looked at his dictionary and told me with a very straight face "fizzle". Maybe what he said was groundbreaking information on this no sex phenomenon!
youta
Member
A typo? "dumb" instead of "dump"?
shanshan310
Member
Shai-Tan
Banned
the issue is that narrative stories often seem like they fit the statistics but are not necessarily a good explanation. draw a line through data and might seem like there's a cause but you can often draw 15 different lines through data. are the attitudes causing low birth rates and family formation? or are the attitudes regarding sex and family dependent on other variables like lack of jobs, expensive housing, student debt, etc? the media (and conservatives who don't want to think about what is wrong with the status quo) like to blame culture (here in North America porn, video games, laziness, and extended adolescence are the cultural explanations of choice)
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
They can't have just put this up when we had a thread on it like two weaks ago.
scnr
How does this happen when you can use google translate to do a better job.
This doesn't actually address the birth rate in any fashion though. Just shows some hostess clubs and a prostitute.
The average person doesn't seem to think about it in my experience, it just doesn't really come up in conversation (at least not as much as you would think when you consider the size of the problem). The media doesn't help, there is almost nothing about the causes of the problem on TV. There is plenty about the effects.
A thing I've noticed from all this information is that part of the reason for the falling birthrate is the desire to maintain the living standards of the previous generation despite the lesser economy.
Those guys technically COULD try to get married and start families, they'd just be dirt poor compared to how their parents lived. The same thing is starting to happen with the current crop of Americans coming of age, though in slow motion. Many are behind where their parents were at the same age and might always be. Chinese people around the same age are screwed to some extent too -- lone children having to eventually support their parents on their own, and a bunch of guys who'll probably never get married because of the gender imbalance.
What's gonna be interesting is seeing how a "lost" generation plays out in relation to its parents over the coming decades. Will they simply collapse under the weight of their retiring parents? Or will something else happen?
Those guys technically COULD try to get married and start families, they'd just be dirt poor compared to how their parents lived. The same thing is starting to happen with the current crop of Americans coming of age, though in slow motion. Many are behind where their parents were at the same age and might always be. Chinese people around the same age are screwed to some extent too -- lone children having to eventually support their parents on their own, and a bunch of guys who'll probably never get married because of the gender imbalance.
What's gonna be interesting is seeing how a "lost" generation plays out in relation to its parents over the coming decades. Will they simply collapse under the weight of their retiring parents? Or will something else happen?
Succinct Verbosity
Member
Doesn't Germany have the same problem? If I recall, like here, one of the main issues is the inability to balance the cost of childcare with a good job. Knowing a few new mothers who have two incomes, they often say the same things - that if they were to stay at home they wouldn't have enough money (even with their husbands/partners income) to provide for their child and that childcare is insanely expensive when a person does choose to work.
I really do feel for them. It's hard enough leaving your child at home whilst you work, but adding the financial worries certainly isn't helping.
I really do feel for them. It's hard enough leaving your child at home whilst you work, but adding the financial worries certainly isn't helping.
It seems to me there is no problem. We are judging the situation from the perspective of protecting the status quo since so many domestic policies are dependent on them, but if the Japanese people are okay with this, then so what?
It's strange that if a westerner criticizes people not starting families or being a manchild or whatever the gaf thread is almost exclusively anger, but when it's japan or Asia all of a sudden it's a crisis. What exactly is the problem here?
Vermillion
Banned
Damn! Japan also has a problem with computer literacy.
No you can't. The government blocks access to porn sites, even streaming ones. While I was living there the few I could access were all banned a few weeks after I'd accessed them.
Of course there are ways and means of seeing it. It's not like Korean guys don't watch porn. Korean hotels even have porn channels with locally filmed stuff - thing is it's not real. They pretend to have sex but there's no actual penetration visible. They cover it with their hands and stuff usually.
Webcam and live stream stuff is also really popular there. But I suppose this is a whole other topic entirely lol.
Necromanti
Member
You are not referring to me, right?
I don't think there is a problem with it. People should do as they please and the planet could probably afford to have a lower total population.
As for the fact that Japanese people don't talk about it, well, that is a problem imo but it applies to pretty much any problem along these lines, not just this one so it's a separate issue.
Wait how did you do that? My Google Translate app doesn't have that!
100/100
LocknessMobster
Member
ElectricBlue187
Member
Actually due to its availability it has informed a lot of young people on how to have sex in a way that nothing has before.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
That sounds to me like little more than an accent.
I feel that if they were trying to enunciate properly, they'd get it close.
My gf and I sometimes pronounce Japanese like gaijin do for fun. It's not a subtle or difficult distinction.
cripterion
Member
For real, some shameful shit going on here with the stereotyping and what not.
I think Japan is going pretty much in the direction I saw the rest of the world eventually going. Women will pretty much reject men as lifelong partners. Being a housewife and looking after kids is not attractive any more. A lot of working women will simply choose to be on their own, some will have children to keep themselves from being lonely in old age but remain a single mum. Seeing as how women are now independent there is no real advantage or reason any more to have the hassle and stress of keeping a man. In some parts of the world being a single mum will even be to your advantage in terms of govt benefits and social housing. Like in the Vice Japan Video modern people are more than willing to pay for all the nice perks of a relationship, but do not want any of the hassle and do not have the time to deal with all of the maintenance required to hold a long term relationship with another human being. Think of it this way, it is hard enough for siblings or even family members to live together in adulthood. Even the best friendships get tested when people live together. Now imagine getting two wholly different people trying to live together in some sort of long term arrangement, its just not going to work - not with the pressures of modern lifestyles.
With that said I actually know quite a lot of young attractive women who have been single for years and aren't eager for any sort of long-term companionship. They are not even socially awkward, they work, they go out with their friends for drinks and have a good time. I'd imagine that they are probably also content with sex toys.
With that said I actually know quite a lot of young attractive women who have been single for years and aren't eager for any sort of long-term companionship. They are not even socially awkward, they work, they go out with their friends for drinks and have a good time. I'd imagine that they are probably also content with sex toys.
entremet
Member
This is not happening en masse in the rest of the world, my friend.
Maidenpool?
Member
I gotta agree with him. Japan is leading the way. We may be at least a decade or few behind.. but we are trending their way too.
Purely anecdotal, but I remember a friend doing an assignment that involved surveying japanese students at the uni I was in Japan. When asked about future aspirations, a lot of the girls answered marriage, as opposed to say, a career related to their major. Just wanted to throw out that there still are Japanese people up for relationships 
As an aside, I think one cultural issue that effects birth rate is how unseperable marriage and having a child is. Having a child whilst unmarried is on the verge of being taboo, making it less desirable if the whole baggage of getting married has to be included.
Hope I got my points across coherently, I'm tired
As an aside, I think one cultural issue that effects birth rate is how unseperable marriage and having a child is. Having a child whilst unmarried is on the verge of being taboo, making it less desirable if the whole baggage of getting married has to be included.
Hope I got my points across coherently, I'm tired
Valkerionseven
Member
Nailed it.
The government and any tv show that uses it as a topic of the week, always talks about the effects but no solutions. Biggest solution, stop screwing ladies over after they get preggers.
Keeps reminding me of that lady who worked at Namco Bandai (?) afew years ago. Got to a pretty highish position in the company, was like a manager or something. Gets pregnant, has her kid, comes back a few weeks later, boom finds out she was replaced, but not fired (and this is kinda common in Japan for higher up members who get pushed aside instead of fired) and told welp, basically your a secretary now and have to work back up to that position or something. No calls, letters, emails, nothing. Guess what happened.
She sued the fuck out of them.
Now Namco Bandai is one of the few companies that has maternity leave and shit for women.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
No one has posted Brian Ashcraft's rebuttal to this article yet? It's on Kotaku... so that's odd. But I do think he makes some good points.
http://kotaku.com/wrong-about-japan-and-sex-1450567428
http://kotaku.com/wrong-about-japan-and-sex-1450567428
Brian Ashcraft said:Wrong about Japan and Sex
BRIAN ASHCRAFT
Right now, Japanese people are having sex. Not all the Japanese people at once, mind you. But it's going on as you read this. Forget what you've recently heard about the country's bedroom habits, because it's just not true.
Over the weekend, The Observer, one of the U.K.'s most respected newspapers, ran a piece titled, "Why Aren't Young People in Japan Having Sex?" It has been aggregated around the internet in pieces that range from alarmist "Japan's Sexual Apathy Is Endangering the Global Economy" (yikes!) to "Japan's Hottest New Sex Trend is Not Having Sex" (so trendy!) and "Young People in Japan Have Given Up on Sex" (all of the young people—they're done!).
In The Observer piece, data is wheeled out to prove that either young Japanese are not doing it or they're not having babies—it's hard to tell sometimes, because there are young people interviewed by the paper do talk about having sex. I didn't see any babies, though.
Some of the data is surprising! Some of it is totally misinterpreted or misconstrued. The Observer claims that "another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all." So...two-thirds have, then? Last I checked, "dating" and "having one-night stands" or simply "having sex" were different. And according to that same study, one in ten couples got married after getting pregnant. But I thought young Japanese people weren't having sex?
One of the most damning bits of data in The Observer piece purports to say that 90 percent of women say "staying single" is better than what they think being married is like. As Twitter user Inoue Eido points out, the survey actually says that nearly 90 percent of woman who haven't married do plan on getting hitched. It's worth noting that the number is higher than it was in the 2002 and the 1997 survey. The original survey also notes that around 87 percent of women think there's merits to being single—it does not say "staying single."
Data is tricky. It might be factual, but it's not truth. Here, the data rolled out doesn't specifically prove people in Japan aren't having sex. It's correlation. Guilt by association. Innuendo. What's more, the numbers simply support the poll at hand, and are not necessarily representative of the larger population. Last year's U.S. presidential election offers proof positive of that.
Also concerning is the inaccurate assertions about the Japanese language. As noted by Inoue Eido, The Observer claims there is an old Japanese saying that goes, "Marriage is a woman's grave." There is a Japanese saying that goes, "Marriage is the graveyard of life" ("結婚は人生の墓場である"), but it's non-gender specific and a reworking of a quote by French poet Baudelaire. There is actually an old Japanese saying that goes, "Marriage is a woman's happiness" ("結婚は女の幸せ"), but that doesn't get a mention.
And then, there's the claim that working women are called "oniyome" (鬼嫁
Finally, there's the claim there's something the Japanese media calls "sekkusu shinai shoukougun" (セックスしない症候群
Okay, the decreasing population is a problem in Japan—a big problem. Yes, that's true! But it's the result of many things: A baby boom, changing family structure, poor child care infrastructure, and restrictive immigration policies that ultimately limit population growth. This is incredibly complex and nuanced stuff—and perhaps, not as interesting as reading about people screwing. Simply writing it off as, "Oh, well, Japanese people don't have sex" seems to dehumanize an entire country. People have sex. It's what we do.
What makes the timing of this story somewhat odd is that it comes as Japan's fertility rate hits a 16-year high, rising slightly last year. (Yes, the birthrate rose for women in their 30s and dropped for those under 30, indicating that many Japanese women, like women in many other countries, are waiting longer to have children. In Japan, the average marrying age is now around 29~31.)
And Japan isn't the only country battling low birthrates. Heck, European countries like Italy, Spain, and Germany do, too. Maybe we can look forward to outlandish claims about their sex lives, too?
Sounds like stories like that need to get out more.
I think to a certain extent that depends on whether or not the current global economic stagnation ends up lasting 20 years like it did in Japan. I think the US and Europe are in the beginning stages of Japan's lost decades, and still sort of have a chance to course correct.
Right now the economic crisis has discouraged a lot of people coming of age from dating, marrying, and raising families. Since the modest recovery though some have gotten back on that track after only suffering what was really just a delay in that process -- marrying older than they originally would have. Whether that continues depends on whether the west can actually get back to pre-recession levels.
Then again, Europe was aging even before the crisis, and the US's birthrate right now is probably largely held up by immigrants.
We're really not gonna see the endgame of this process until the older generations start to die off in the middle of this century.
wow, just read the article and it blew my mind.
this is so future and i think this is going to happen in the rest of the world too.
i have to admit, i feel sometimes like what was described in the article.
but that is the mistake of the opposite sex of demanding too much...
btw. about korea and porn:
i live right now in korea, and its impossible to find or watch porn online.
you need to use proxy all the way or use torrents. and if there are pictures, which give you a glimpse what awaits you in that file, well... you cant download that torrent-file.
i dont know how they do it, but its all fucked up.
there are actually peeps out there who like that...?
this is so future and i think this is going to happen in the rest of the world too.
i have to admit, i feel sometimes like what was described in the article.
but that is the mistake of the opposite sex of demanding too much...
btw. about korea and porn:
i live right now in korea, and its impossible to find or watch porn online.
you need to use proxy all the way or use torrents. and if there are pictures, which give you a glimpse what awaits you in that file, well... you cant download that torrent-file.
i dont know how they do it, but its all fucked up.
there are actually peeps out there who like that...?
- Status