Young adults in Japan are having less and less sex, according to a recent review – and we don’t know why.
The review estimated that around half of Japanese people reach their mid-twenties with no sexual experience at all, and approximately 10 per cent reach their 30s before having sex.
Even those who have lost their virginity don’t seem to be having much sex. Online surveys from the 2020s indicate that around half of Japanese adults aged 20–49 are sexually inactive, meaning they haven’t had sex in the past year.
And this national dry spell seems to have got worse in recent decades, with rates of sexual inexperience and inactivity both increasing since the millennium.
In comparison, just over one in three Japanese adults aged 20–24 reported being sexually inexperienced in 2002. By the 2020s, online survey data indicates this may have risen as high as 60 per cent of men and 51 per cent of women in the same age group.
At least, these are the conclusions of a review of Japanese sexual attitudes and behaviours, published in The Journal of Sex Research.
The study’s authors trawled through 38 publications, based on 43 surveys on sexual trends in Japan from 1974 to 2024, mostly in a heterosexual context.
Among their findings were the rise of sexlessness within marriage, and the popularity of pornography and the services of sex workers, especially among men.
For instance, in some surveys from 2008 to 2024, up to 60 per cent of Japanese men said they had previously paid for sex.
In high-income countries all over the world, young adults seem to be having less and less sex. For example, a 2019 study reported that nearly a third of their UK respondents said they hadn’t had sex in the previous month, compared with around a quarter in 2001.
But the authors of this study wrote this issue was particularly pertinent in Japan, where “sexual behaviours are often described as a puzzling and contradictory mix of permissiveness and expectations of discretion.”
While they couldn’t be sure why Japanese adults were having so little sex, the authors did suggest some possible explanations.
One was that they just didn’t want to. A 2020 online survey indicated that 20–30 per cent of men aged between 20 and 39 years said they didn’t want to have sex, as well as around 40 per cent of women in both age groups.
Perhaps, the authors suggested, unmarried adults in their 20s and 30s were unwilling to waste time and money on dating people they might not marry.
Japanese society is still overwhelmingly heteronormative, the study authors wrote, with limited acceptance and visibility of non-heterosexual identities. Very few survey participants identified as homosexual, sometimes as few as 1.5 per cent – Credit: Getty images
And, for women particularly, the idea of marriage might not seem so appealing, in a culture where they were expected to bear most of the responsibility for household chores.
Plus, the authors continued, Japanese adults did not seem so embarrassed about virginity and abstinence, compared to adults in countries such as the US or UK.
And other outlets for sexual desire were more acceptable, for example fictosexuality: the expression of romantic or sexual feelings towards fictional characters.
A 2017 survey of Japanese students aged 16–22 found that 14–17 per cent of them admitted to having romantic feelings towards a character in a video game or anime.
At the same time, the authors wrote that a demanding work culture, with long hours and commutes, may make it difficult for young adults to form and maintain sexual relationships. In Japan, around 30 per cent of men and 15 per cent of women work for more than 50 hours per week.
Also, sex education in Japan was limited, very few women used hormonal contraception, and there was limited acceptance of non-heterosexual identities.
Dr Vanessa Apea, a consultant physician of sexual health at Barts Health NHS Trust – who was not involved in this research – told BBC Science Focus that the study was “striking” for what it revealed about the shifting priorities of young Japanese adults.
“Rather than a decline in desire, the evidence points to broader social and economic influences at play; long working hours, job insecurity, evolving gender roles, and a cultural emphasis on stability before partnership,” said Apea.
“While sexual frequency is also falling in the UK and US, Japan’s pattern feels more pronounced – perhaps an early signal of a global shift where technology, work culture, and modern expectations are quietly redefining how we connect, form relationships and experience intimacy.”
However, Apea urged for caution with this study’s results, because its data came from a wide range of surveys where participants may have defined their sexual experiences differently.
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