Introduction and objectives: This report examines the results of the 6th The National Survey of Sexual Behavior of Youth. This survey has been conducted at six years intervals since 1974 in Japan. Goals of presentation: Analyzing the data on contemporary Japanese youth’s sexual behavior and consciousness from the perspective of gender. Methods: The survey was conducted by the collective questionnaire method in the classroom. The subjects of this survey were 5000 students of approximately 80 junior and senior high schools and universities selected from nine areas in Japan with various populations. Results: (1) What makes an impression is the low sexual concern of high school students, and their increasingly conservative norms of sexuality. In particular, girls’ sexual images are very low, indicating that compared to boys, Japanese girls are still sexually oppressed. (2) Generally, boys are earlier concerned with sexual activities than girls, because they aren’t curbed about their sexual behaviors in comparison with girls. (3) While the rate of girls’ sexual experiences is high, it doesn’t mean that their sexuality is uninhibited. It can be seen that girls have a negative opinion of sexual behavior outside the norm, and that they attach deep emotional significance to their sexual activities: “pure love”. For them, “pure love” is not platonic relation. “Pure love” is a faith that sexual experiences should be neither too close to nor too remote from love. In addition, Japanese girls dream and search the man of her destiny, who accepts the girls in their in her entirety, in return for her agreeing to his desire. Conclusion: Japanese youths trace the course of sexual experiences following not girls’ sexual interests but boys’ ones. Consequently the double standard of sexual behavior between genders perpetuates.
Conflict of Interest: None disclosed
Financial Support/Funding: The Japanese Association For Sex Education
Sydney Australia, April 2007
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