More marital arts practice required

TOKYO - Japanese people just aren't getting enough action in the bedroom, an expert says, warning that the lack of amour is leading to a baby shortage.

"Japanese people simply aren't having sex," Dr Kunio Kitamura, director of the Japan Family Planning Association, said in the Japan Times.

A survey of 936 people showed 31 per cent had not had sex for more than a month "for no particular reason".

"As much as subsidies and welfare programmes are important, sexlessness is a critical issue in this problem."

Japan's fertility rate - the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime - fell to an all-time low of 1.25 children last year. Demographers say a rate of 2.1 is needed to stop the population falling.

Japan came last among 41 nations in an bedroom poll last year, with lovers having sex 45 times a year compared to a global average of 103 times a year.

Kitamura said that while many men in workaholic Japan are simply too "stressed out" to have enough energy for sex, many other couples simply do not have sex regularly. In the survey, 44 per cent of the people felt that having a relationship was "tiresome".

Kitamura's advice? Couples should talk more. "Ultimately, it's interactions with the opposite sex that bring out the inevitable animal instinct in us."

- REUTERS