Earlier, later or asexual: sexual activity of Japanese adolescents
The seventh National Survey of Sexual Activity of Japanese Adolescents (The JASE Survey), conducted every six years since 1974, was carried out in 2011. The survey enquires into changes in adolescents’ experience of sexual activity, gender consciousness such as division of labour between the genders, their sexual education, the source of sexual information and so on. The latest survey focused on the decline of the rate of sexual activity which had been rising up until the previous survey, investigating the reasons for the decline by considering changes in the background lifestyle situation. For example while it is said that the media promotes adolescents’ sexual activity, although adolescents can more easily access sexual information due to the development of media, their sexual activity is more inhibited.
The background of this inhibition is a decline in sexual interest itself; the lowering of the rate of the experience of ejaculation shows that adolescents are in a situation which does not rouse their sexual interest. To sum up, while we had been trying to clarify the distinctive features of adolescents who are sexually active early, in contrast now we will focus on the adolescents who delay their sexual activity, because of the critical situation in Japan of an increase in unmarried people and delayed marriage, and a decrease in the number of children. Of course adolescents are not monolithic, there are those who have early sexual experiences and those who are delayed, and the divide is widening. This report will consider the lifestyle situation causing adolescents to accelerate or delay their sexual activity by referring to their family and school life.
