Making less money apparently makes men less attractive to the opposite sex, according to Spa! (1/17).
.........................................
Only about one in five guys making less than 3 million yen a year managed an average of one session a week, but when incomes rose to 6 million yen or more, the frequency of fornicators became one in three.
"There're two ways of looking at a survey result that shows the less money a guy makes, the less sex he gets," Shinji Miyadai, a sociology professor and probably Japan's foremost expert on the country's underbelly, tells Spa! "Firstly, among low-income earners, there are many people who are reluctant to take risks, which in turn reduces the likelihood of them coming across a chance to succeed. And then, with little expendable income, it's also hard to be fashionable, you're forced to work longer hours and this in turn limits the opportunity to have sex."
Miyadai continues: "I'd say the overall situation is probably a bit of both cases. And in both situations, those with few opportunities for sex generally have lower expectations of themselves and tend to want to avoid being hurt. They aren't really into dating, have other interests than women, and are basically not in the game from the start, meaning that the chance they will get a bit will never come around."
Miyadai says that the tendency to shun involvement is evident in other areas of Japanese society.
"It's my theory that Japanese are useless at diplomacy and useless and the love game. The fundamental principle of diplomacy is behaving in as strategic a manner as possible to get the best results. It's a world of taking one step backward to be able to move forward two steps, and a place where results count more than process. If you're too proud and only keep talking about yourself, you'll soon find the person you're talking to will begin looking elsewhere and it's all over. In that case, there's nothing wrong with acting the idiot if it achieves the desired result," Miyadai tells Spa! "National gain and dealing with the opposite sex basically work on the same principles. And work, too, for that matter. I'd recommend people try picking up women on the basis that success there will act as a springboard for success in other areas of life. Chatting up women can be an effective way to learn about the real things in life, like how it's impossible to become happy yourself if you don't know how to make others happy." (By Ryann Connell)
January 2006