News: Sexless Japan, Will someone have sex with me? Options

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http://iafrica.com/loveandsex/news/389122.htm

NEWS
Will someone have sex with me?
Max Sato
Posted Tue, 09 Nov 2004

Craving sex after repeated rejection by their partners, women who felt doomed to join Japan's growing ranks of the "sexless" are being offered a prescription: a squad of well-dressed men ready to assist free of charge.

The unique counselling service was launched four years ago in the outskirts of Tokyo by celebrated sexologist Kim Myong Gan, drawing sex-starved women who found little satisfaction from textbook advice, sleeping pills and other medication.

The 54-year-old Kim, a self-trained love-making specialist, beams with positive chi energy from working out and eating healthy. He says he showers his clients with praise for their good looks and personality, reassuring them that their sex lives are far from over.

He then recommends a powerful remedy: free soul-healing conversation and passionate sex with a mature man of the woman's choice from a pool of 25 volunteers.

The men, aged 36 to 60 and based in four Japanese cities, dress in suits and sometimes are trying to meet their own sexual needs, such as one volunteer who is taking care of his bed-ridden wife.

Kim encourages safe sex but beyond that does not interfere with the romance between his "healers" and patients.

Kim calls the treatment a temporary fix but also a crucial first step towards a woman regaining her confidence.

"Japanese women are too patient about the void in their sex lives while their male counterparts are too immature about loving their partners," Kim said.

Kim explained that many Japanese men soon after marriage start regarding their wives as a mother or sister ?too close to have sex with. And their wives tend to accept it, observing how their fathers treated their mothers.

"It's something that has been handed down through generations here," Kim said.

Breaking the sex taboo

Despite Japan's image as a promiscuous country awash with open pornography, the Japanese are among the world's least sexually active people, according to a recent survey by condom manufacturer Durex.

The Japanese have only 46 sexual encounters on average each year, compared with 79 for the Hong Kong Chinese and Singaporeans, 82 for Indians, 90 for mainland Chinese and a whopping 137 for the French.

It has long been taboo to discuss one's sexual problems openly in Japan. But many distressed Japanese women, and some men, are breaking the trend, encouraged by internet chatrooms and media reports on so-called "sexless couples".

The term was coined by psychiatrist Teruo Abe 13 years ago about couples having no sensual contact, not even cuddling or kissing, for more than a month and unlikely to have any sex in the future.

"I wonder where mens sex drive has gone," Abe, who runs a counselling clinic in Urayasu, east of Tokyo, said. "A surprising number of cases don't even masturbate for a month or two while not having sex with their partners."

'You look like my sister'

Tomomi (36) thinks she is a victim of the phenomenon.

She felt humiliated every time her husband (38) refused to do what "normal" couples do in bed. His excuses were always that he was tired from too much work, that she looked like a little sister or that their apartment was too cramped.

After only sporadic intercourse during their three-year marriage, Tomomi warned him that having no sex for six months could lead to divorce. The reluctant husband agreed to meet her for a "date" at a hotel room.

"The result was miserable. The whole thing lasted for only five minutes with no foreplay, as in the past. It just hurt me physically and mentally," recalled Tomomi.

Tears trickled down Tomomi's cheeks as she listened to Kim's straight-forward but warm-hearted speech saying it was normal to seek a sex life and that she was not alone.

Kim's service includes an initial 90-minute session that costs ?0 000 ($189) plus free telephone counseling for three months and visits to his "field hospital". Many women, some of them virgins approaching middle age, immediately seek the help of a sex volunteer.

Before Tomomi could enlist a volunteer, she started looking around and met a "soul mate", a mature man in his 40s who she says is a good listener and passionate lover.

Who's to blame?

Japanese media speculate the nation's slumping sex drive could be caused by environmental pollution and growing exposure to electromagnetic fields through mobile phones and power lines that sends sperm counts plunging.

But Abe noted that the men disinterested in sex have busy work schedules and are sleep-deprived and complain they have no time for any hobbies.

"The best medicine would be a weeklong holiday on a southern island," he said.

For Hiromi Ikeuchi, a marriage consultant who heads the psychiatric and legal counselling group Tokyo Family Lab, Japanese woman are often themselves immature and demand perfection from their partners.

Japan's divorce rate has shot up to 2.3 for every 1 000 people in 2002 from 1.4 a decade earlier. Ikeuchi has seen a flurry of divorces by women who cheated on husbands they claim were unable to satisfy them sexually.

"It's castration of sons by their mothers," Ikeuchi said. "It's a curse from those mothers in unhappy marriages who wanted their boys to grow up being nice and attentive to what women have to say."

Kim cautions that not having sex for a while is not the same as being "sexless".

"I sometimes don't have sex with my wife for a few months, but I wake her up with aroma oil foot massage to the music of Chopin every morning," said the counsellor. "There is a difference between being sexless and being off sex."