{"id":1702,"date":"2013-10-26T20:08:32","date_gmt":"2013-10-26T20:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2013-10-26T20:08:32","modified_gmt":"2013-10-26T20:08:32","slug":"sex-in-japan-now-sex-in-the-west-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2013\/10\/sex-in-japan-now-sex-in-the-west-tomorrow\/","title":{"rendered":"Sex in Japan now, Sex in the West tomorrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fascinating article on Japan and the rise of the Single<\/a>.<\/p>\n


SEE WHAT I DID THERE ALL RIGHT.<\/em><\/p>\n

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A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34<\/a> were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30<\/a> had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I say rise of the single instead of \u201cno sex\u201d because well, it\u2019s not the same. Masturbating is having sex alone and only Japanese know what they\u2019re doing in their bedrooms.<\/p>\n

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"Both men and women say to me they don’t see the point of love. They don’t believe it can lead anywhere," says Aoyama. "Relationships have become too hard."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It rings true for like, lots of people amirite. The point that older generations don\u2019t get is that it really became hard to do everything with someone, with virtually no safety net. when it was possible post WW II (the Great Acceleration), it was in a certain fashion that is no longer acceptable (patriarchy, jobs for life). We knit around those concepts, bearing with more or less of that old system that brought us to adulthood but barely works today with couples working for relatively small wages, struggling much more than their parents, regardless.<\/p>\n

So the norm explodes. In Japan mostly, we\u2019re still all fucked up by catholicism and stuff anywhere else. Even more since 9\/11 (\u201cwe need to stand against Muslims, let\u2019s get married!\u201d). Sigh.<\/p>\n

Younger, I was wondering how my generation would hold on in our 30s because obviously, we knew that marriage wasn\u2019t that much of a great thing to do. And that it didn\u2019t matter to raise kids. But in a mix of laws, social pressure and history we\u2019re lagging. It\u2019s coming though. I predict a huge amount of singles in their 40s and 50s in the next decade in Europe and US. <\/p>\n

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According to the government’s population institute, women in their early 20s today have a one-in-four chance of never marrying. Their chances of remaining childless are even higher: almost 40%.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It makes total sense. It\u2019s totally taboo to talk about that but really, we don\u2019t need more humans around these days, Mother Earth would agree. Nothing personal against kids, just a question of timing. Maybe in a generation, fifteen twenty years from now it will become natural to start a family in Japan because everything will be much easier, cheaper etc so that people can actually enjoy a family life and not try hard to survive it. Until then, hello Single Life!<\/p>\n

Older generation don\u2019t understand that you can mainly care about yourself AND still care about your surrounding. Because we know our surrounding are affecting us, so we take care of them. It seems like an equation that hurts their brains. \u201cif you\u2019re selfish, you don\u2019t care about others\u201d.  That was before globalization, grandpa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fascinating article on Japan and the rise of the Single. SEE WHAT I DID THERE ALL RIGHT. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1703,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions\/1703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}