Over 40 percent of Japanese adults are virgins

A survey of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 found that just about 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship with the opposite sex.


Additionally, a considerable number of them have never got close and cuddly. Around 42 percent of the men and 44.2 percent of the women admitted they were virgins.

The government won’t be pleased that sexlessness is becoming as Japanese as sumo wrestling and sake Japanese rice.

The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has talked up boosting the birthrate through support for child care, but until the nation does more in the bedroom department there’ll be no awards to hand out.

A long way from getting together and getting it on, the genders are becoming separated.There are now many more virgins than in 2010, when the last study was conducted and when only 36.2 percent of men and 38.7 percent of women said they had never had sex.

The survey which was released Thursday, was conducted by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.


The surveys did not ask about same-sex partners.

The institute said the increase in singles was particularly sharp for people in their late 20s, the age at which science tells us women are most fertile.

Asked about their hopes for the future, there seemed to be recognition that families are what people are bound for.

Nearly 90 percent of the respondents said they want to get married “sometime in the future.”

But 30 percent of the 2,706 men sampled and 26 percent of the 2,570 female respondents said they were not currently looking for a relationship.

Boosting the birthrate is one of the coveted objectives of the current administration, which has declared it will raise the fertility rate from the current 1.4 to 1.8 by 2025 or so. The government hopes to achieve this by making it easier for families to raise children, such as by increasing the places available at nursery schools.

The survey suggests it may also have to find a way to play cupid.

Meanwhile, the same study found that the number of children among couples who have been married for between 15 and 19 years averaged a record-low 1.94.


The study, conducted in June last year, covered 8,754 single people and 6,598 married couples across the country.