No Sex, We're Japanese?

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has two fascinating looks at sex and marriage in Japan.  There's a poll out that says the Japanese are uninterested in sex.

The survey, conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association, found that 36% of males aged 16 to 19 said that they had “no interest” in or even “despised” sex. That’s almost a 19% increase since the survey was last conducted in 2008.

If that’s not bad enough, The Wall Street Journal reports that a whopping 59% of female respondents aged 16 to 19 said they were uninterested in or averse to sex, a near 12% increase since 2008.

Hold on, says an emailer to Glenn.  The real problem is the three lost decades in Japan since the meltdown in the 1990s.

The statistics you link to miss the point. Young Japanese guys are as horny and desperate to get laid as any guys in the world. Probably more so, since only young Arabs get less actual sex. Japanese girls are as eager to find an alpha male boyfriend as any other nationality. Japan still produces the most prolific and extraordinary porn in the world. Someone is watching it.

Unfortunately, three lost economic decades has resulted in a plethora of un- or under-employed young beta men, without real jobs or prospects of success, and young women who look at these prospective suitors and despair.

And, of course, our Japanese friends have been patiently doing Keynesian economics now for three decades in a conventional attempt to get out of their economic doldrums.  They have little to show for it.

This helps put Mitt Romney's bonehead comment about not worrying about the very poor in context.  The Democratic Party is an over-under party, a combination of the top 20 percent in their tenured sinecures and the bottom 20 percent in their lifetime benefits.  The Republican Party is the party for the people in the middle, the people without benefits and without government sinecures.

The Republican Party better pay attention to the tragic situation of ordinary young people in Japan.  Because we must not let that happen here.  So it's good that Mitt Romney is paying attention.