SINGLE PEOPLE IN JAPAN WAIT DECADES FOR ROMANCE

Love and sex seem to be a struggle in Japan, as the country's birth rate plummets and the number of single people continues to rise. Virtual sex is helping for some - but many are still hoping to marry, Lars Nicolaysen reported for Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

Mariko is worried about her friend's sex life. "She wants to have a baby, but she and her husband never have sex," says the 44-year-old. "Her husband loves video games and food, but he's not interested in sex," she adds about her friend Yoko's complaints. Mariko also doesn't have a sex partner, though she's long wanted a husband and a child. They're far from alone in their homeland, Japan, where romantic relationships are on the retreat and the population is aging faster than any other industrialized nation in the world.

With these figures also comes a rising number of single people: "About 25 per cent of today's youth in Japan will probably remain single and unmarried for their entire lives," says professor Masahiro Yamada from Chuo University, who once coined the term "parasite singles" to describe grown Japanese adults who remain unmarried and live rent-free with their parents. The number of single people in the entire population had dramatically grown in the last three decades. The result: A nation with the dubious reputation of being sex-free. Yet, singles patronize clubs and red-light districts while women also buy sex toys. In one dangerous statistic, Japan’s adults consume more diapers than babies.

In 2015, a study from the University of Tokyo showed that one in four women and one in three men in their late 30s were single. Half of them had no interest in heterosexual relations, according to the survey. Japanese media reports regularly on an increase in virginity and a supposedly declining interest in sex and dating among young people. But is this supposed loss of libido to blame for Japan's low birth rates? Researchers say the problem is far more complex. "Japan is really obsessed with the traditional image of a family," says Yamada, who's written a book about young people and conservative values.

In 2015, there were 2.2 million more single women and 1.7 million more single men between the ages of 18 and 39 than compared with the number of singles in the year 1992. "After the age of 30, you're either married or single. Very few people in the older age groups are unmarried and in a relationship," writes Peter Ueda, an epidemiology expert at the University of Tokyo. It's therefore reasonable to assume that the most socially acceptable form of an adult relationship is "an obstacle to the formation of romantic relationships in Japan," he writes in the journal PLOS ONE.