More than a third of married couples in Japan have stopped having sex - many of them because they are too tired, or just can’t be bothered.

According to Government-backed medical researcher Kunio Kitamura, head of the Japan Family Planning Association, about 37 percent of couples surveyed this year said that they had not had sex for at least a month, compared with 32 percent in 2004.

His written survey involved 1,468 married men and women, with a maximum age of 49. The most common reason (given by a quarter of the males surveyed), was being too tired after work, whilst 19 percent of female participants said sex was too much of a hassle.

Kitamura said:

It’s a question of work-life balance; this is not something that the individual can tackle alone. The people who run companies need to do something about it.

The trend could have serious consequences for Japan, whose falling birth-rate and aging population are continuing headaches for the government. The average number of children born to a Japanese woman in her lifetime was 1.34 in 2007, compared with 2.1 in the United States in 2006.

Kitamura noted doctors may be partly to blame for Japan’s negative attitudes toward sex during pregnancy or after giving birth.

He is set to report to the Ministry of Health on his findings next year.

Posted by Jonathan in Anthropology, Sociology