Nippon No Sex: Young Japanese Men “40% Virgin”

A national sex survey reveals over 40% of Japanese men in their twenties are now still virgins, along with a variety of other interesting findings about the nation’s varied but increasingly non-existent sex life.

The survey – appropriately enough entitled “Nippon No Sex” (“Japan’s sex” in Nipponese) – covered 14,100 Japanese aged 20-60 across 47 prefectures, and was conducted by condom manufacturer Sagami Rubber.

Most strikingly, 40.6% of men in their twenties reported never having had sex, compared to only 25.5% of women.

The figure for men dropped off precipitously to 9.5% in their thirties (and to 5.1% for women), suggesting that the chances of Japan’s most recent generations of young men may well be worse than ever – or possibly that they are more committed to “herbivorousness” than ever.

Even so, average ages of first experience differed little throughout Japan, with a low of 19.6 in Okinawa, and a high of 21.1 in Ibaraki – although an increase in those having never got any would not necessarily have much impact on this number.

Average numbers of sexual partners did however differ a great deal – Kochi led with 12.4, followed by Okinawa with 10.2 and the also ironically named Aichi with 10.1. At thee bottom languished (or led, if fewer partners could be taken as a sign of more success in finding better ones) Saitama with 5.3, Ibaraki with 6.2 and Shiga with 6.3.

Unsurprisingly it was Tokyo which boasted the lowest rates of marriage, at only 59.3%. Shiga had the highest with 76.3%.

Rates of actual sex were uniformly low – from 2.79 times a month in Saga to a dismal 1.52 a month in Osaka.

Quizzed about their general adulterousness, they proved reliably unreliable – 78.7% stayed true but 15.8% had another special someone and 2.2% had several, along with 3.4% being hardcore libertines having sex with an additional “non-specific” partner or partners.

Most of these partners were picked up at the company (21.4%), the school (10.3%), a friend’s introduction (16.4%), were an actual friend (13.9%), or on SNS (4.4%) or otherwise. Only a minority (7.2%) were obtained from bars or similar.

Japanese asked about the preferred gender of their partners did prove reliably heterosexual, with 93.6% of men preferring women (4.9% preferred men, 1.2% either and 0.3% a potentially disturbing “other”), and 89.8% of women, men (7.1% preferred lilies to roses, 2.4% liked both and an intriguing 0.7% liked “other”).