| The story below is originally published on Mainichi Daily News by Mainichi Shinbun (http://mdn.mainichi.jp). |
| They admitted inventing its kinky features, or rather deliberately mistranslating them from the original gossip magazine. |
| In fact, this is far from the general Japanese' behavior or sense of worth. |
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| ※ この和訳はあくまでもボランティアの方々による一例であり、翻訳の正確さについては各自判断してください。 もし誤訳（の疑い）を発見した場合には、直接ページを編集して訂正するか翻訳者連絡掲示板に報告してください。 |
Sexless sisters just need their love button flicked to turn on 2006,08,10
AERA 8/14-20 By Ryann Connell
Sick of the negative connotations implicit with being labeled sexless,growing numbers of celibate Japanese women who've also given up on love are referring to themselves as having turned their sex switches off,according to AERA (8/14-20).
Mayuko is one woman who turned her sex switch off, saying she gave up on both men and mounting for three years after an acrimonious split with her boyfriend just over a decade ago.
Now 39, Mayuko had lost her virginity at 21 to a man other than her boyfriend of the time and had been fairly active. But, after turning her switch off at age 28, she shacked up with a classmate from her school days,and though they shared the same bed, their relationship was otherwise purely platonic.
"My love switch was turned on, but the idea of sex was repulsive," the IT industry worker tells AERA.
"I just didn't want to be touched."
Eventually, Mayuko got her groove back, but it took four years.
And she got the urge the very moment her patient boyfriend had finally had enough and walked out on her, traveling to the United States.
She was about to start playing the field when her man returned, but their relationship was never the same and after they broke off, Mayuko learned he'd been two-timing her anyway.
Feeling down, she sought help from her gynecologist, who said she was pre-menopausal and suggested her condition could have been the result of not having sex.
She promptly went out on a naughty romp with a much younger man.
"I realized that it's always nice for a woman's body to get some Mr. Moisturizing Cream," she says.
Mayumi Nimatsu, a marriage counselor, says she advises women not to refer to themselves as sexless, instead saying that they've turned their sex switch off.
"The word 'sex off' is more interesting than 'sexless.' For women who find it a huge emotional burden to not have love or sex, it's much easier to handle if they tell themselves they have simply turned their sex switch off.It could make things much easier," Nimatsu tells AERA.
"I think couples work better if there's a sexual link, but there's no need for them to set down in concrete exactly how they should go about their intimacy."
Tomomi Shibuya, author of "Nihon no Dotei (Japan's Virgins)," says that men should take more of the blame for the lack of sex amongst Japanese couples.
"Love technologies have improved incredibly since the late '80s. With schoolgirls now, you've got to send them 10 e-mail a day reminding them how much you love them, or they will start to think that they're not being loved at all. The game involves getting more and more advanced all the time," Shibuya says.
"There are loads of guys who couldn't be bothered with dealing with that sort of stuff."
Indeed, statistics seem to bear out Shibuya's claims that guys have to take more of the blame for Japan's lack of sex.
Japan Family Planning Association figures show that about 10 percent of Japanese men in their 40s are virgins as opposed to about 0.6 percent of women.
"There are increasing numbers of women in their 20s burdened by their belief that love and sex leads to an improvement in the quality of their lives. But the biggest problem -- about women only being popular with guys as long as they're young - fails to surface. Actually, there are many guys in their 20s who've gone beyond switching off sex, they simply don't have any interest in it at all," virgin expert Shibuya says.
She may have a point. Ad man Hitoshi bundled his girlfriend and sent her home by cab rather than take her to a hotel for a wanton romp after they went out drinking and she missed her last train home.
"Even if I do find a woman I think is nice," he tells AERA.
"Having sex is all just such a nuisance I couldn't be bothered." (By Ryann Connell)
August 10, 2006
