SEXLESS IN JAPAN

SEXLESS IN JAPAN.

Strolling through my local supermarket one afternoon, I came across Natsuko in the meat section.

“Is this beef or pork?” I asked in English, not caring whether or not she understood.

“Oh that’s pork,” she responded, as though she had been anticipating this moment her whole life. Then she quickly seized the opportunity to display her English skills by taking me on this drawn-out journey about her blood type, family,

“My husband is heart surgeon,” her English school and her ski trip to Breckenridge, Colorado in a week. Like a CD box set from the carpenters, she went on and on, blah blah blah blah blah! And as if that did not suffice, she broke out her cell phone to display photos.

“This is my cat, my dog, my two daughters and oh, this is the car my husband bought me for my birthday last month.”

“Well enjoy your trip to Colorado and here’s my number. Call me when you get back.”

Two weeks passed and Natsuko called the day after her return, to arrange a date within a couple of days. Clad in the most hideous, bright pink dress, a pink feather scarf, a multi-coloured coat only Joseph would wear, some baby blue Walmart shoes and gaudy jewelry from a Cracker Jack box, she appeared at my door, gleaming from ear to ear, bearing gifts from Colorado. It was as though she had subscribed to every fashion magazine and book that Tammy Fae Baker and Cza Cza Gabore wrote and edited. Had I been the fashion police she would have been arrested and given the electric chair.

“Let’s go find something to eat.” And I shuddered to think I could be seen in public, walking with this mascot.

“It would have to be local,” I thought.

“Definitely not in Osaka or Sannomiya, heaven forbid, one of my homies would see me traipsing with this spectacle,” I scolded myself.

In our Palo Alto, California-like suburb just three minutes’ drive from my apartment, there was a bar, Wheelers, owned by an American. It was there that I suggested we take cover, but to my disheartenment she insisted on walking - a cringe inducing proposal. Along the way she insisted on holding hands and snuggling up to me as I tried to conceal my disdain for her actions. But recognizing her meal ticket to getting her pent-up needs met, she took charge and continued by breaking it down to me in Japanese English and a whiny elementary school voice, as if laying out the terms for a hostile take over.

“I want you to be my boyfliend. I want us to go movies, dinner and to symphony. I like music, I like go to concerts. And oh, I really like to dancing. I want you to take me to dancing. You don’t have car, so you can drive me in my car. I’m not safety driver anyway and if you drive, I’ll really feel like I’m in date.”

“What about your husband?”

“He hates all those things, he just likes work.”

“Shiiiiii,’ if a nigga go get paid,” I entertained myself in caricature African-American pimp vernacular.

“I damn sho wouldn’ go, perambulatin’ with Tami Fae fo’ free.” The performance on my futon would also be a determining factor. “If Tammi Fae wuddn go kick down no chedda, she bedda be packin’ some good heaven between her legs. After all, she ain’t dat bad. She jus’ needs a little consultation, you know, a work in progress, a neglected diamond in the rough, but doable. She just needs a little TLC,” I was no Versace, but the second thing after her performance assessment would be to get her to buy herself some new clothes and get the hell out of those granny glasses.

At 39 years old, Natsuko epitomized the desperate subsistence of a great many, if not the overwhelming majority of married, especially middle-aged women in Japan. Theirs is a perdurable existence completely devoid of love, affection, orgasm, sex or most other elements listed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Many self-opiated with magic mushrooms, legal in Japan up until 2003, but most endure in quiet desperation, developing or exacerbating personality disorders and or psychoses, while others substitute hobbies for fulfillment of vital needs and or, begrudgingly live vicariously through Korean dramas of love on television.

A low percentage, among which Natsuko was included, develop the courage to get pleasured by foreign men. Like most her peers trudging through a loveless arranged marriage of 25 years, she idolized Bae Yong-Joon, the male lead in ‘Winter Sonata,’ the most popular Korean television romance series then. For her and those other pitiful women like her, he was exemplary of the soft, gentle, sensitive, caring, kind, attentive and affectionate man they wish they had for a life partner. But instead, were cursed with the chauvinistic, mechanical, frigid, cold, workaholic, android economic animal of a specimen, which is the Japanese male. Also, the relationships portrayed in his television series exemplified nurturing, supportive and compromising unions, which for them were unattainable fantasies, far beyond the dark realities of their oppressive and sexless dyads.

During his public appearances in Japan, Mr. Sama, as I like to call him, would be ambushed by an onslaught of pathetic, emotionally challenged, obstreperous women, ranging from their mid-thirties to well into their sixties. They braced the elements, weeping and wailing, just to get a glimpse of their idol, some even sustaining injuries when his car, attempting to flee the chaos, crushed their feet. Nachan was one of those kawai sou (pitiful) women existing vicariously through her then 17 and 18-year-old daughters, often boasting about adopting their musical tastes and wearing their clothes. With Britney Spears, Back Street Boys and Ninety-Six Degrees in permanent rotation in her Benz and her singing along to every song, time spent out with her was a teeth-extractingly painful undertaking.

Huddled over lumber flavored French fries and concerned by the possibility of being spotted by an acquaintance on the way back to my apartment, I ate hastily as we engaged in perfunctory conversation. Returning to my apartment, I wasted no more time to rid her of her Tammy Fae fascia. Once at the doorway inside my apartment, I began by unwrapping the hideous blue feathers from around her neck, then undid the hook at the back of her dress. With the shyness of an elementary schoolgirl, she squealed and franticly attempted to cover her perky-round-bra enclosed mammaries, as her dress fell to her ankles.

“No, no, hazukashii, I’m shy.”

But as I cupped her globose C cups, she melted like butter touched by a hot knife.

It had been five years for her and though she had just returned from a family vacation in Breckenridge, Colorado where she made several advances at her husband, he didn’t even as much as look her way. But it was by no means because she was undesirable. Daily swimming made her toned, nothing hung out of place. With all my might I tried to devour her 36Cs, through her lacy bra. Savagely I removed the shoulder straps to get a proper mouthful, and as I tried my utmost to swallow her melons, I was transformed into a snake on the discovery channel trying to swallow a tiger whole. She had perfect gravity defiant mountains and was shocked by my instant affinity toward them.

“You like them?! My husband hates them.”

“Put them away!” she said he chided deploringly.

“And cover yourself,” referring to her phallus petrifying cleavage. He was especially embarrassed around his friends and found her frequent request for sex taxing and taihen, (distressing) so he sanctioned her extra-marital affairs.

To say she was sexually frustrated is an understatement.

“My husband doesn’t even give me ude makura (arm pillow).

“Sometimes I just ask him to let me rest my head on his arm, and he can’t even allow me to do that.”

The first thing that came to my mind was that he was gay, but concealing it in heterosexual marriage, some kind of Brokeback Mountain Syndrome.

“No, that’s just Japanese men. All my friends’ husbands are like that.”

“But he’s a very good provider,” a mantra recited by all middle-aged married women and many other married women I had bedded in Japan.

“What red blooded male, with a functioning penis would reject his come-hither wife for so long?” I asked myself, prying off her girdle. The girdle, the same kind my grandmother wore, is a common accessory among some Japanese women obsessed with being or appearing to be thin. Even 21-year-old women here sport them.

But in answering my own question, I recalled, this is Japan, where according to a 2024 Japan Family Planning Association survey, forty-eight percent of married couples are sexless. The JFPA defines sexless as having sex less than once a month. But that number jumps to 68% when completely or nearly sexless couples are included. A 2019 survey by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research found that 52.6% of married couples abstain from sex. Many found sex tiresome, some even citing timidity as a major contributor to asexual behaviour. Natsuko and many of my other subjects in Japan were among those statistics.

On the other side of the Atlantic, psychiatrist believe that a sixth of all American couples are sexless, but it is without question that timidity is not one of the contributing factors. American sexlessness can be attributed more to stress, overwork – especially with both parents working – an overflowing family schedule and sleep deprivation. In Japan on the other hand, there are two prominent causes of sexlessness among married couples; the ubiquitous mother complex, known here as the mazaakon and, what I have coined the baby mama complex. Perhaps the ‘Japaneseized’ version of that term would be something like, “bebimazaakon,” or “bebimamakon.”

The mazaakon is a commonly reported psychological phenomenon where the man sees his wife more as a mother figure and loses all sexual interest in her. These men hail from overbearing and overindulgent mothers, some reportedly manually stimulating them to ejaculation and others even engaging in full blown sex during their upbringing. It is reported that Japan has the highest rate of mother son incest in the industrialized world. These officious mothers multiplied after the Second World War, as Japanese women – the defacto head of household – were relentless in their actions to leave their mark on Japan’s economic growth, by directing their families.

It is necessary to point out that this power that the Japanese woman wields in the home is not the result of some mutual agreement between her and her husband, but like many social movements here, is reactionary. In this case a default arrangement to men working fifteen hours or more a day. In the grand scheme of things, Japanese women’s domestic power is academic and does not transfer to the society in general. Also pervasive is successive sexlessness or, baby mama complex. This occurs when a couple who once enjoyed a healthy sex life, desists from sexual activities after the birth of their children. Again, the main culprit is usually the man, who after childbirth no longer sees his wife as a woman, but like his mazaakon peer, sees her only as a mother. In their eyes, mother and lover status are mutually exclusive. In some cases, it is the women who neglect their husbands, directing all their attention and energy to the children and it must be stated that the tendency of Japanese parents to share their futons with their children, sometimes to elementary school age, doesn’t exactly promote a rabbit-like sex life.

There are four main types of sexlessness in Japan. Sometimes partners are mutually content with their asexual behaviour and require a great deal of space from each other. Hence sleeping in different beds, oftentimes even in different rooms, in essence existing as flat mates. In a recent survey of childless couples, only a third of the couples slept together, while the remainder slept separately. Then there is the scenario of couples agreeing to keep sex away from the home, supposedly in the best interest of the kids, and as a result find some outside location, like a love hotel, to get busy. Also often in this arrangement, are affairs and brothel patronage.

To the euphoria of the Western male, these extra-marital activities are usually consented to, provided they are done discretely. Such is the arrangement of a significant number of my white Western acquaintances married to Japanese women. In the third type, one party simply cannot perform physically and given the high rate of alcohol and tobacco consumption among Japanese men – two things renowned to cause erectile dysfunction – the blame lies again more frequently on the men. In the fourth case, one partner wanting a physical relationship is simply refused by the other. Like many of Japan’s social ills, sexlessness is wedded to a hyper-conservative social structure lethargic in its change and being fully cognizant of these social dynamics, I and many other Westerners, my Australian friend Roger McQueen included, see it as our natural duty and obligation to rescue excitement deprived Japanese women, one orgasm at a time.

I sank my hands inside Natsuko’s panties and waded through the predictably unmanicured Japanese forestry.

“There should be a law against such overgrowth,” I thought, sinking my finger into her soaked virgin-like well, leading her to my futon, with my finger in her from behind, as she tried bashfully to cover her chest. Though not the max, I was aroused enough to rock her into a different time zone. Natsuko was the Ainu looking type, not the Manchurian type of my preference. She had Caucasian-esque features, a slightly convex nose, which I despise and atypically big eyes for a Japanese woman. She had a slender cello-shaped body, with no evidence of having given birth once, let alone twice. But her hands, course from household detergents, showed signs of housework.

Except for the hands and the gingivitis, she was a sexy middle-aged woman of above average beauty, who would have been well sought after in the West. I just had to avoid kissing her. The few times I mustered the courage to try, it was like kissing an inflatable doll. Rigid and stiff, she had no idea what to do with her mouth. On my futon, I dined on her breast while slowly occupying her and as expected, she commented on my size, as I was her debut on the darkside.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, been hearing that since four years old, just shut up and take it,” I said to her imaginarily. After a few painful moments she loosened up and flung her long legs in the air, receiving all of me. I fed it to her, gyrating until I was at her belly button. In her thirty-nine years she had never had an orgasm and I didn’t care enough to try to give her one, she was happy enough just simply being occupied.

The thought crossed my mind to release irresponsibly inside her because, like all Japanese women I had been with thus far, defeated and unempowered, she never requested my wearing a condom. In the West a woman, at least a sensible one will tell you, “no glove, no love.” However, Japanese women, having long since lost control of even their own fertility, submit to patriarchal abuse without resistance. In essence, in Japan, the male subtext of those dynamics is, “I don’t wanna use a condom, just get an abortion.” The women’s only response is, “don’t come inside me, ok?” I am absolutely guilty of taking full advantage of these dynamics, to feed my addiction. But in Natsuko’s case I reconsidered and gave some thought to the tailspin, the drama in which her upper middle class suburban existence would descend, if I impregnated her.

“Naka ni dasanaide ne!” (don’t come inside me) And with that I yanked out at the final second and splattered all over the futon. Natsuko showed up for regular servicing for a year, many times discreetly leaving her house while preparing the family meal, after telling her husband she’s just “running down to the supermarket.” Things got a bit out of hand when she began to live on my doorbell sometimes at three in the morning when my futon was otherwise occupied. On occasions, if I had no work the next morning and or, my futon was unoccupied, I would let her in for a quickie, for which she was always grateful. But her beggarly demands did my head in. She didn’t know what time it was, always demanding girlfriend status and that I held her hands, drive her around in the E class her husband gave her and, take her out dancing and to the movies. All this and, get this, I had to pay. On two occasions where she met Karin at local festivals to which she invited us, Natsuko had the effrontery to speak ill of me to Karin, attempting to discourage her from moving in with me.

“He’s a bad person, you shouldn’t live with him,” she advised in Japanese, unaware that I understood every word.

Once I accompanied her to the Ashiya mall to select some new glasses. Upon arriving at the cash register to pay for the specs I chose, she stood in position looking at me, under the misguided impression that I, on an English teacher’s salary, was going to pay the equivalent of $400 for some new glasses for her, the kept wife of a medical professor. Genuinely disappointed, she embarrassingly explained to the salesperson that she would not be getting the glasses at that time. That’s when I had to break it down to her in the car.

“Natsuko,” I said fuming, “You are married! You’re married to a surgeon. You need a boyfriend. I don’t need a girlfriend, I got enough. I am a black male in Japan. You should be buying shit for me. If you want to date me because of some fantasy and because you missed out on being courted as a result of your arranged marriage, if anyone’s gonna pay, its gonna be you. Not me!” It was gut wrenchingly sad to watch this poor woman hanker and yearn for chivalry, romance, affection, humanness and sexual fulfillment, which were all starkly absent in her loveless, sexless omiai (arranged marriage) of so long.

“I’m not gonna date you, I reiterated, “but you can come over sometimes if I have the time.”

“Well, I want more than that, I want boyfliend who is loving and kind, who treats me like lady and…..” A fantasy she had developed from extensive travels and interaction with the West and Western couples. But the harsh reality was that she, like legions of Japanese wives in her shoes, was hopelessly bound to a marriage as stimulating as watching sand in an hourglass. My explanation of protocol was futile, and she just could not understand why she was at a disadvantage.

Natsuko and I continued for years, after which I stopped responding to her emails and telephone calls and to her incessant bangings on my door, especially at odd hours in the mornings when my bed was occupied.

Now 43 years old, periodically we’d bump into each other in the neighborhood at which time she was always available for a quickie. On our final encounter in January 08, to my surprise she had heeded my advice from years earlier and made a 180-degree change in her appearance. Her wardrobe was now regal, contemporary and stylish and she had begun visiting the dentist on a trimonthly basis.

“I learned many things from you and now, I have many men, young men in their 20s after me.”

NEXT: MIKAGE