The Abstinence Clearinghouse Blog

Rise in Japan teen sex ignites education debate

Last Updated: 2005-06-16 11:11:25 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sixteen-year-old Monami Okubo sees nothing wrong with
sex before marriage.

“I really don’t think there’s any reason to wait,” said the bespectacled
first-year high school teen, wearing her school uniform as she chatted
with friends in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya district. “It’s not realistic.”

Attitudes like Okubo’s are troubling for Japanese policy makers alarmed
by a leap in teenage sexual activity.

Nearly half of all 17-year-old girls have had sex, up from around 17
percent in 1990. For boys, the figure is 40 percent, nearly double the
1990 figure, according to Health Ministry data.

A resulting jump in sexually transmitted diseases among young people and
rising teenage abortion rates have touched off debate about sex
education in a nation where pornography is widely sold but taboos about
frank discussions of sex linger.

The debate pits those urging more detailed sex education against those
who say schools are already far too explicit and some who want to
promote U.S.-style abstinence education.

Ruling party lawmaker Eriko Yamatani says explicit sex education is
partly to blame for the rise in teen activity.

“This is teaching kids from primary school that as long as you use
contraception it’s OK to have sex,” she told Reuters.

Yamatani, 54, supports some sex education in schools but worries that
some of the methods used - such as anatomically correct nearly
life-sized male and female dolls and textbooks with illustrations of
people having sex - are too graphic.

Girls, she said, should be learning that they “can become mothers and
their bodies are sacred, their bodies aren’t theirs alone. They are very
sacred things that give birth to new life.

“So, as a result, it’s desirable to have abstinence until marriage,” she
added. “This message has to be thoroughly taught.”

Sex education is part of basic health curricula in most primary schools,
while middle and high school students get sketchy information about
contraception.

NOTHING USEFUL

On the other side of the debate are educators who feel more concrete
knowledge is needed, especially in a society where natural curiosity
about sex is fanned by suggestive scenes in the media, the prevalence of
erotic comics and a relatively lax attitude toward sexual exploitation
of young people.

“There’s porn all over the place,” said Yukihiro Murase, a lecturer in
sexology at Hitotsubashi University near Tokyo.

“It really is quite a stimulant.”

Data suggests that the message about the risk of pregnancy and sexually
transmitted diseases is either too muted or simply ignored.

The number of abortions in women under 20 is over 40,000 annually
compared with 19,000 in 1980. Abortions have long been common in Japan,
where condoms are the main form of birth control.

And the number of teens diagnosed with chlamydia - which can cause
sterility - shot up to 6,163 in 2003 from 3,639 four years earlier,
according to Health Ministry figures. Other surveys suggest the real
numbers may be even higher.

“Many schools teach the names of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs),
but kids think the only people who get these are middle-aged men,” added
Masako Kihara, an associate professor at Kyoto University. “Or they
think it only happens in cities.”

Many Japanese teens have a high turnover in partners - as many as three
or more a year - but believe they’re safe from sexual diseases because
they only have one partner at a time.

“We need to teach that there’s a real risk to them. If you make it
specific enough, they’ll finally understand. Things like saying that you
are basically having sex with everyone your partner’s had sex with for
the last few years,” Kihara added.

The Education Ministry is trying to walk a fine line between the
opposing camps.

“There are parents who don’t want us to teach in great detail, so we
can’t teach the whole class that way,” said a ministry official.

“Something must be done to prevent STDs, but at this point we ask
teachers to instruct pupils in danger of this privately.”