Now 39, Mayuko had lost her virginity at 21 to a man other than her boyfriend of
the time and had been fairly active. But, after turning her switch off at age
28, she shacked up with a classmate from her school days, and though they
shared the same bed, their relationship was otherwise purely platonic.
"My love switch was turned on, but the idea of sex was repulsive," the IT
industry worker tells AERA. "I just didn't want to be touched."
Eventually, Mayuko got her groove back, but it took four years. And she got the
urge the very moment her patient boyfriend had finally had enough and walked
out on her, traveling to the United States. She was about to start playing the
field when her man returned, but their relationship was never the same and
after they broke off, Mayuko learned he'd been two-timing her anyway.
Feeling down, she sought help from her gynecologist, who said she was
pre-menopausal and suggested her condition could have been the result of not
having sex. She promptly went out on a naughty romp with a much younger man.
"I realized that it's always nice for a woman's body to get some Mr.
Moisturizing Cream," she says.
Mayumi Nimatsu, a marriage counselor, says she advises women not to refer to
themselves as sexless, instead saying that they've turned their sex switch off.
"The word 'sex off' is more interesting than 'sexless.' For women who find it a
huge emotional burden to not have love or sex, it's much easier to handle if
they tell themselves they have simply turned their sex switch off. It could
make things much easier," Nimatsu tells AERA.
"I think couples work better if there's a sexual link, but there's no need for
them to set down in concrete exactly how they should go about their intimacy."
Tomomi Shibuya, author of "Nihon no Dotei (Japan's Virgins)," says that men
should take more of the blame for the lack of sex amongst Japanese couples.
"Love technologies have improved incredibly since the late '80s. With
schoolgirls now, you've got to send them 10 e-mail a day reminding them how
much you love them, or they will start to think that they're not being loved at
all. The game involves getting more and more advanced all the time," Shibuya
says.
"There are loads of guys who couldn't be bothered with dealing with that sort
of stuff."
Indeed, statistics seem to bear out Shibuya's claims that guys have to take
more of the blame for Japan's lack of sex. Japan Family Planning Association
figures show that about 10 percent of Japanese men in their 40s are virgins as
opposed to about 0.6 percent of women.
"There are increasing numbers of women in their 20s burdened by their belief
that love and sex leads to an improvement in the quality of their lives. But
the biggest problem -- about women only being popular with guys as long as
they're young - fails to surface. Actually, there are many guys in their 20s
who've gone beyond switching off sex, they simply don't have any interest in it
at all," virgin expert Shibuya says.
She may have a point. Ad man Hitoshi bundled his girlfriend and sent her home
by cab rather than take her to a hotel for a wanton romp after they went out
drinking and she missed her last train home.
"Even if I do find a woman I think is nice," he tells AERA. "Having sex is all
just such a nuisance I couldn't be bothered."
Copyright 1999-2006, Mainchi Daily. Used with permission. All rights
reserved. Ryann Connell is a Staff Writer and Senior Desk Editor for the
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