Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

What happens to a country when its young people stop having sex? Japan is finding out… Abigail Haworth investigates

www.theguardian.com|Abigail Haworth

Aoyama's first task with most of her clients is encouraging them "to stop apologising for their own physical existence". 

Aversion to marriage and intimacy in modern life is not unique to Japan. Nor is growing preoccupation with digital technology. But what endless Japanese committees have failed to grasp when they stew over the country's procreation-shy youth is that, thanks to official shortsightedness, the decision to stay single often makes perfect sense. This is true for both sexes, but it's especially true for women. "Marriage is a woman's grave," goes an old Japanese saying that refers to wives being ignored in favour of mistresses. For Japanese women today, marriage is the grave of their hard-won careers.

Official alarmism doesn't help. Fewer babies were born here in 2012 than any year on record. (This was also the year, as the number of elderly people shoots up, that adult incontinence pants outsold baby nappies in Japan for the first time.)

In the Japan Family Planning Association's 2013 study on sex among young people, there was far more data on men than women. I asked the association's head, Kunio Kitamura, why. "Sexual drive comes from males," said the man who advises the government. "Females do not experience the same levels of desire."

"Gamers" are, in large part, a marketing construct, for sure. That is not a knock against people who identify that way -- all sorts of aspects of identity these days are driven in part by marketing.

The 1990s is also when we as an industry twigged to the idea that we could intentionally cultivate the gamer identity, and the geek identity. With Ultima Online we were one of the first to do a "collector's edition" box, for example. The practice of creating art books and statuettes and the like, to more heavily monetize the core consumer, began to take hold -- think of it as early microtransactions, where we found ways to charge the whales more money. 

E3 and other events shifted really noticeably from the shy, geeky, shared enthusiasm sort of vibe to the loud, garish, booth babe and guns vibe. In the arcades, the vibe moved towards fighting games, and the birth of the FGC, which had a much more confrontational, trash-talking vibe in general than other earlier games communities, just because of the nature of the game (it also was much more inclusive and diverse, because at this point, aracde machines were in urban areas, poorer areas, and arcades were somewhere safe for teens to go).

By the 2000s, you could lay most of the top games of the year down on the floor and look at the covers, and they'd almost all be a big burly dude with a gun. I actually got in the habit of doing this every year, as I judged for the various awards panels.

This other Mom mentioned how excited she was to hear me speak because her son wants to play Minecraft on the “game system” and she was concerned about it. I knew at that point my talk was going to be a big help.

I suggested to parents whose kids play online games to sit with them one night and ask if they can wear the headset for a bit. My guess is the kid will look horrified.

The Photic Sneeze Effect, also known as the “Autosomal dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst (ACHOO) syndrome,

Vinyl vs. Digital - and Digital is the Winner.

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The 16-bit samples means that the CD is able to (disregarding dithering) represent a dynamic range of 6.02*16+1.76 dB ~= 98 dB, which is much greater than any analog reproduction or recording system (Analog master tapes are capable of a dynamic range equivalent to 13-14 bits), and you should, in any normal room, be able to play at 120-130 dB without the noise floor of the CD becoming a heavy nuisance.

First, the cutting lathe for a vinyl master isn't some perfect, idealized zero-mass system. It too exists in the real world, has mass, and will alter the output dependent not only on current input, but on past input. It has a limited rise and fall time, dependent on the electronic circuit in front of the cutting head, and on the mechanical properties of the cutting head itself. Read: It's not going to "track the gentle curve of a violin".

This brand used to be the epitome of high quality among the throngs of pedestrian grocery store brands. Rich, flavorful, and natural were a few adjectives that used to describe their products. 

Today, there is so little cream in the product that, according to IDFA standards, it is not technically ice cream. In fact, Breyer's must now legally package their products as "Frozen Dairy Desserts".

"State X Lawmaker says he wants to blow up the moon" - 0.5

This is the point and laugh stage. You have no idea how few votes it takes to elect a member of the House in a state legislature. Every one has plenty of village idiot kings elected by 1,200 people or so...

"Senate passes anti-moon bill" - 8.5

Oh shit... things just got real. After both chambers have passed their version of the anti-moon bill, they will have to send it to committee to iron out the differences in the two different versions of the bill. Maybe the senate favored some sort of death laser for the moon while the house approved a version calling for Bruce Willis to embed nukes in the moon's core. Sometimes these differences are enough to kill the bill altogether (at least for the current session), but the legislature is now all agreed in principle that the moon has it coming.

My father, on the other hand, did not like Manna at all from the very first day he saw me wearing the headset in the restaurant. He and Mom had come in for lunch and to say hi. I knew they were coming, so I had timed my break so I could sit down with them for a few minutes. When I sat down, my father noticed the headset. "So", he said, "they have you working the drive-thru I see. Is that a step up or a step down?" "It's not the drive-thru," I replied, "it's a new system they've installed called Manna. It manages the store." "How so?" "It tells me what to do through the headset." "Who, the manager?" "No, it's a computer." He looked at me for a long time, "A computer is telling you what to do on the job? What does the manager do?" "The computer is the manager. Manna, manager, get it?" "You mean that a computer is telling you what to do all day?", he asked. "Yeah." "Like what?" I gave him an example, "Before you got here, I was taking out the trash. Manna told me how to do it." "What did it say?" "It tells you exactly what to do. Like, It told me to get four new bags from the rack. When I did that it told me to go to trash can #1. Once I got there it told me to open the cabinet and pull out the trash can. Once I did that it told me to check the floor for any debris. Then it told me to tie up the bag and put it to the side, on the left. Then it told me to put a new bag in the can. Then it told me to attach the bag to the rim. Then it told me to put the can back in and close the cabinet. Then it told me to wipe down the cabinet and make sure it's spotless. Then it told me to push the help button on the can to make sure it is working. Then it told me to move to trash can #2. Like that." He looked at me for a long time again before he said, "Good Lord, you are nothing but a piece of a robot. What is it saying to you now?" "It just told me I have three minutes left on my break. And it told me to smile and say hello to the guests. How's this? Hi!" And I gave him a big toothy grin.

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