And welcome to another edition of ‘Other Cultures are the Weirdest’ of the Day, where we bring you news of why Asians are doing it all wrong.  Today’s example: a study from Japanese that shows that Japanese men are increasingly losing interest in having sex, and that married couples are having less sex than ever before.  

The following is just awkward, problematic and a bit uncomfortably enjoyable:

…A new government-commissioned study finds that young Japanese men are losing their interest in sex, yet another warning sign in a nation notorious for its low birth rate.

According to the AFP, a whopping 36.1 percent of teenage boys between the ages of 16-19 said they had little to no interest in sex, and in some cases even despised it, more than twice the 2008 figure of 17.5 percent. Futhermore, the survey,conducted in September 2010, reportedly found that 83.7 percent of Japanese men who turned 20 this year were not dating anyone, while 49.3 percent said they had never had a girlfriend. Girls, it seems, are suffering from a similar lack of heat: 59 percent in the same age group felt the same way, up 12 percentage points from 2008.

Kunio Kitamura, head of the clinic of the Japan Family Planning Association which took part in the survey, said the data confirms a wider social belief that younger Japanese men are becoming “herbivorous,” a label attached to passive men who do not actively seek women and sex. Many younger people were opting to delay starting a family due to the perceived burden on their finances, lifestyles and careers. “The findings seem to reflect the increasing shallowness of human relations in today’s busy society.” Kitamura is quoted by CNN as saying.

The study, which reportedly surveyed 1,301 people aged 16 to 49, yielded a handful of other surprises: 40.8 percent of married people said they had not had sex in the past month, up from 36.5 percent in the 2008 survey and 31.9 percent in the 2004 survey, while nearly 50 percent of married people older than 40 years old said they have not had sex in the past month. Some participants claimed work fatigue and reluctance to have sex after childbirth, while others said they “can’t be bothered.”

“Obviously, the most important reason for Japan’s declining birth rate is that people are not having sex,” Kitamura told the Telegraph. “Combined with the rising number of elderly people, this population imbalance is a major problem.”

And let us leave you with the amazing photo the Huffington Post has provided for us in accompanying this news story…

(via HuffPo, but even more so via JustMo)

The Museum could easily fill all its bare white walls with post-postmodern artifacts from the country that is Japan.  So now to add to the meat vending machines, horrific / perfect game shows, and “sharking”, we have Japan’s latest porn obsession: Old people.  Or to put it more PC-ly, “Elder Porn”.

Perfect.

TIME Magazine (it’s this thing that has big red iconic font and of late tends to feature “captivating” “minimalist” photos on the front of their magazine to entice readers to buy the actual print instead of reading it all for free online… they’ve been around for a long time… the people that do the whole ‘Person of the Year’ thing… still not ringing any bells?  Dammit) has more:

Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that’s because he’s kept his part-time job — as a porn star.

Shigeo Tokuda is, in fact, his screen name. He prefers not to disclose his real name because, he insists, his wife and daughter have no idea that he has appeared in about 350 films over the past 14 years. And in his double life, Tokuda arguably embodies the contemporary state of Japan’s sexuality: in surveys conducted by organizations ranging from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the condom-maker Durex, Japan is repeatedly found to be one of the most sexless societies in the industrialized world. A WHO report released in March found that 1 in 4 married couples in Japan had not made love in the previous year, while 38% of couples in their 50s no longer have sex at all. Those figures were attributed to the stresses of Japanese working life. Yet at the same time, the country has seen a surge in demand for pornography that has turned adult videos into a billion-dollar industry, with “elder porn” one of its fastest-growing genres.

(This is a DVD box cover of a porno starring Shigeo Tokuda)

Tokuda is rare among Japanese porn stars in that his name has become a brand. The Shigeo Tokuda series he has just completed portray him as a tactful elderly gentleman who instructs women of different ages in the erotic arts, and he boasts a body of work far more impressive than most actors in their prime.

Tokuda’s exploits have proved to be a goldmine for Glory Quest, which first launched an “old man” series, Maniac Training of Lolitas, in December 2004. Its popularity led the company to follow up with Tokuda starring in Forbidden Elderly Care in August 2006. Other series followed, and soon elder porn had revealed itself as a sustainable new revenue stream for the industry. “The adult-video industry is very competitive,” says Glory Quest p.r. representative Kayoko Iimura. “If we only make standard fare, we cannot beat other studios. There were already adult videos with Lolitas or themes of incest, so we wanted to make something new. A relationship between wife and an old father-in-law has enough twist to create an atmosphere of mystery and captivate viewers’ hearts.”

Director Gaichi Kono says the eroticism of elders is captivating to younger viewers. “I think that, as a subject, there is this something that only an older generation has and the young people do not possess. It is because they lived that much more. We should respect them and learn from them,” says Kono passionately.

Please observe the extra photograph below that we couldn’t resist adding into this true artifact:

Read the rest of this article at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1815509,00.html

This might tell you the time, but does it in fact tell more?  Does it say something about dance, music, art?  Or does it just point out how much time we are desperate to waste on the internet.

Thanks Japan, you’ve pulled some weird and pseudo-thought-provoking shit again.