Japanese experts have challenged a survey’s claims that “celibacy syndrome” is a credible cause of the country’s low birth rate and that young Japanese people are alone in showing less interest in sex.

A survey published last week of Japanese attitudes towards sex caused a stir with the claim that about 40% of young single men and women have never had sex – a phenomenon that is being blamed for the low birth rate in Japan, where it is predicted the population will plummet from 127 million over the next century.

The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research’s poll of 5,000 single men and women aged 18-34 found that the proportion of virgins had increased significantly over the past decade: among men, 42% said they had never had sex; among women the figure was 44%.

The study is one of several in recent years that portray Japan as a country with a collective loss of libido. Blame has been directed at “herbivorous” men, parasite singles, couples trapped in sexless marriages and otaku men, who prefer virtual relationships to real ones – the inspiration behind a 2013 BBC documentary No Sex, Please, We’re Japanese. Now it is the turn of the country’s virgins.

But Tomomi Yamaguchi, an associate professor of anthropology at Montana State University, has questioned the claim that Japan is in the grip of a “pathological” loss of interest in sex, and points to similar trends in other countries, including Britain.



“While the British situation is largely blamed on unemployment, Japanese singletons are blamed for having a unique – sometimes framed as exotic or pathological – lack of interest in sex, marriage and procreation,” she said.

The most recent poll suggests there has been a steady rise in the number of Japanese virgins. A similar study in 2005 found that only a third of young single people had never had sex. Five years later, the number of unmarried virgins had risen to 36.2% among men and 38.7% among women.

But a 1992 survey by the same institute showed the percentage of single male virgins aged 18-34 was almost the same as last year, at 41.5%, while the percentage of female virgins had fallen from 56.3% in 1992.

A Japanese man enters a strip club in downtown Tokyo. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Discussion of Japan’s waning sexual appetite “tends to portray ‘sexlessness’ as uniquely Japanese, based on its weird and awkward culture,” said Yamaguchi. “Usually the focus is on how Japanese men are not interested in real people, that they have trouble communicating and prefer manga, anime and computer games.”

She said Japanese culture tended to to be sensationalised as awkward and unique, while there was little discussion of the complex political, economic, and social reasons why the birth rate remained low and why Japanese people were hesitant about marriage.

Japan, though, is finding it hard to shake off its image as the global capital of sexual inactivity and incuriousness, with the Japan Times going as far as to claim last week that “sexlessness is becoming as Japanese as sumo and sake”.

Now that more attention is being paid to the private lives of millennials, the notion that the Japanese are singularly ambivalent about sex is beginning to unravel, however.

Kunio Kitamura, the director of the Japan Family Planning Association, said the country was not alone in apparently losing interest in sex. “The US, South Korea and other industrialised nations are also going through it,” he said.

Nevertheless, the condom maker Durex found in a 2012 survey that Japanese couples, comparatively speaking, have very little sex (an average of 48 times a year). The Greeks, by contrast, appear to have time for little else (164 times).

That, according to population experts, bodes ill for the government’s quest to raise Japan’s birth rate – the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her childbearing years – from the current 1.4 to 1.8 by 2025.

The results of the population institute’s survey were met with scepticism among young Tokyoites. “I’m surprised by the findings, because I’m pretty sure that all of my friends have had sex,” said Haruko Kobayashi, 29. “Not that we talk about our sex lives that much.”

Others point out that, for many Japanese people, an inactive or sporadic sex life is nothing to be ashamed of. “Japanese society doesn’t pressure people to have sex,” said Yuta Aoki, a cultural commentator and author of There’s Something I Want to Tell You: True Stories of Mixed Dating in Japan.

“Being sexless is more socially acceptable. I remember talking to married Japanese men about their sex lives and how they had stopped having sex after having children. For them, it was something very normal. In other cultures, people make a bigger effort to maintain an active sex life, possibly because their culture tells them that not having sex is a problem.

“But this is not necessarily the cause of the low birth rate. Recreational sex is not the same as sex for reproductive purposes.”

Yamaguchi identified another weakness in the institute’s survey: the absence of gay men and women, divorcees and widows.

“I don’t know if the virginity rate would be dramatically different if single gay men and women were included, but posing the question: ‘Have you had a sexual intercourse with the opposite sex’, is not an appropriate way to determine levels of virginity,” she said.

“For a national institute that is supported by the government to use this type of question could strengthen the heterosexual norm while excluding others, and that’s extremely problematic.”

The survey makes another key omission: the large number of men – and a much smaller number of women – who make use of Japan’s eclectic, multibillion-dollar commercial sex industry.

“I think it’s likely that people don’t talk honestly about their sex lives,” said Yamaguchi. “I wonder if people are really willing to discuss their use of services provided by sex workers, especially in a survey administered by a government body. The same could be said about sexual minorities, and heterosexual women and men who may not be willing to openly discuss their sex lives.”

Kobayashi’s name has been changed at her request.