They’re calling it “celibacy syndrome,” a condition
in which a large proportion of young Japanese, both men and women, have lost
interest in both sex and dating. The numbers are astounding – 45% of Japanese
women between 16 and 24 report either disliking or having no interest in sexual
contact, with more than a quarter of men in the same demographic agreeing with
them.
Hypotheses abound as to why this may be so, primary
among which are currently poor economic conditions in Japan as well as
lingering outdated conceptions of male and female roles in society. But this
can’t be the whole story. Take a country like Afghanistan, which has a terrible
economy, but one of the highest birth rates in the world. Look at the United
States – we, too, once expected women to fulfill “traditional” roles while men
worked to support the family. But society’s opinions change as people do, and
there’s no reason to believe that Japan should be an exception.
The mistake, I think, lies in treating this as a
social issue. You can’t “fix” this kind of situation with large-scale therapy
because it probably isn’t psychological at all. Instead, it’s far more likely
that the Japanese are exhibiting a very natural biological response to long-standing
conditions in their national environment.
There is one very noteworthy example of a similar
and well-documented phenomenon – the panda. For decades scientists have been
trying to rescue the panda from extinction, but it’s not only habitat loss
that’s endangering the pandas; they have an extremely low birth rate. Even in
captivity it’s difficult to persuade pandas to reproduce. Why? Because they
refuse to mate.
Pandas are likely unhampered by clinging to
traditional conceptions of gender roles. They’re not still living with their
parents when they’re thirty-five, and they don’t see being in a relationship as
getting in the way of their careers. Yet their mating behavior is extremely
reminiscent of what seems to be transpiring among the young Japanese. Maybe the
problem is not the double-edged sword it seems to be; maybe it’s not that
they’re experiencing habitat loss and that they also have a low birth rate;
maybe the habitat loss is instead the cause of the low birth rate.
I read somewhere a long time ago that women who are
overweight have a better chance of giving birth to girls. I’ve thought a lot
about that. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? A high amount of body fat suggests
living conditions in which food is abundant; a situation ideal for creating new
baby-makers. But then it also stands to reason that people should be less
likely to make more people when they live in an environment that is unable to
support them. It’s an old story. Think about cacti, patiently waiting for rain
to come to the desert so that they may burst forth in their annual bloom. Or
about animals with well-defined mating seasons; these creatures are hard-wired
to give birth when food sources will be adequate. Are people any different?
In industrialized nations, birth rates have been
declining world-wide over the last century. Indeed, certain countries (like
Japan) have declining populations because they no longer produce enough new
children to offset the number of its citizens who die. The typical culprits
presumed to be associated with this international trend are shifting social values,
women joining the workforce, and broad access to contraception. But what if
those factors are not causes, but effects?
Among other species, the self-limiting nature of a
particular population is often obvious. An overabundance of deer will trigger
an increase in the number of wolves available to prey upon them until the
increased number of wolves can no longer be supported by the reduced number of
deer. Humans, of course, have few predators (besides other humans) and some of
our deadliest known diseases have largely been controlled by advances in
medicine. And in developed countries at least, hunger is comparatively rare.
Yet the industrialized nations are huge consumers of natural resources; far
more rapacious than their poorer counterparts. Is it possible that on the most
basic, chemical level, human bodies, too, recognize when population growth
needs to stop?
Japan has the lowest birth rate of any country in
the world. It also has the longest average life expectancy. Similarly, nations
at the highest end of the birth rate scale (particularly the so-called Third
World countries of Africa) have the lowest life expectancies – as low as 47
years in a nation like Sierra Leone, versus 83 years in Japan. Few would argue
that Africa has such a high birth rate because its economy is so strong and the
prospects for young families so glowing. It seems clear, rather, that with the
comparatively high death rate, there is simply more room in that environment
for humans to be born. And in nations which are both physically and
economically overcrowded, like Japan, perhaps in spite of our technological
advances and know-how, there really is only so much space for a species to
expand.
Children are the customary result of people coupling
up, and maybe this reported lack of interest in sex and relationships is not a
consequence of psychological factors like doubtful economic prospects or
changing social mores, but a biological response to an environment which, like
any other, has limits on the population it is able to support. Japan may be
only the beginning; perhaps the other developed and people-packed nations of
the world will gradually also become subject to Japan’s changing perception of
sex and relationships as their citizens’ needs begin to exceed their available resources.
It doesn’t mean that humanity is doomed. On the contrary, this may be the start
of a worldwide leveling off of the human population; a hint that we’re
approaching that natural balance that most long-lived species eventually
achieve.
One might even suspect that a century from now,
“celibacy syndrome” may no longer be isolated to particular countries, but will
be planetary in scope. Indeed, as our beloved Earth becomes less and less fit
for human occupation, as certainly seems likely, perhaps sex itself will become
a relic of some distant, dirty past, confined to vast digital volumes of
internet pornography from the twenty-first century that no one will even want
to look at anymore.
But I don’t think we need to worry that. Humans will
always have some interest in and desire for sex; it’s natural, after all,
practically a prerequisite to belonging to the animal kingdom. Of course, human
sex may eventually end up just like other animal sex; one day it may be reduced
to a minimum of foreplay and an eye towards the quick finish – getting the job
done, if you will. Then we’ll find ourselves faced with different kinds of
questions. Such as whether we still want to live in that kind of world.
