"Grasseaters"

Emily Fairbairn reports at the Sun,

Japan’s birth rate is ranked 222 out of 224 countries.

The government estimates that by 2060 the population will have fallen from 127 million people to just 87 million, with 40 percent aged 65 and over.

...Professor Masahiro Yamada, a sociologist at Tokyo’s Chuo University is a specialist on Japan’s marriage crisis.

He warned: “The falling birthrate will probably have a very severe impact on the Japanese economy.”

“Japan’s social security system will probably collapse.”

No wonder the government wants to get people interested in real-world sex — but it is quite a task.

One of the biggest problems is the rise of a generation known as the “grass-eater men.”

They are defined by being very shy and uninterested in sex. Surveys suggest 60 percent of men in their 20s and 30s identify as being grass eaters.

...Yet, perhaps not surprisingly, prostitution is rampant.

It is thought that 37 percent of Japanese men have paid for sex at least once, compared with just seven percent of British men.

...In Tokyo there is even a street known as Schoolgirl Alley, home to dozens of cafes where men pay to hold hands with teenagers in school uniforms.

A woman in a maid costume serves customers at the Maid Coffee Shop in the Akihabara District in Tokyo.Getty Images
TV host Stacey Dooley recently made a BBC3 documentary about the cafes, and found girls as young as 13 are paid to go for romantic walks with their middle-aged clients.

She said: “These cafes are perfectly legal. The men seem completely unashamed.”

“But in my mind, these young girls are clearly employed as objects of sexual desire. You have to ask what this says about Japanese culture.”

Read more here.