No sex? More dogs then

As the number of dogs has increased, so too has the number of childless women and couples.

IN A smart and expensive neighbourhood of Tokyo, Toshiko Horikoshi relaxes by playing her grand piano. She’s a successful eye surgeon, with her own private clinic, a stylish apartment, a Porche in the garage — and two pet pooches by her side: Tinkerbell , a chihuahua and Ginger, a tika poodle. “Japanese dog owners think a dog is like a child,” says Toshiko. “I have no children, so I really love my two dogs.”

Many Japanese women like Toshiko prefer pets to parenthood. Startlingly, in a country panicking over its plummeting birth rate, there are now many more pets than children. While the birth rate has been falling dramatically and the average age of Japan’s population has been steadily climbing, Japan has become a pet superpower.

Tinkerbell and Ginger even have their own room and a wardrobe full of expensive designer clothes for dogs. They have jumpers, dresses, coats, and fancy dress outfits, neatly hung on jewelled hangers, and a pile of hats, sunglasses and even tiny shoes on a shelf beside them.

This canine couture doesn’t come cheap. A poodle pullover can cost $250 or more. In Japan many international fashion labels such as Chanel, Dior, Hermes and Gucci offer designer dog products with matching price tags.

In many parts of Tokyo, it is easier to buy clothes for dogs than for children. There are any number of boutiques selling everything for the best dressed dog about town — from frilly frocks to designer jeans, from nappies to organic nibbles, and the smart ‘doggie bags’ and buggies or pushchairs to transport them in.

Official estimates put Japan’s pet population at 22 million or more, but there are only 16.6 million children under fifteen. The number of dogs has risen sharply in the last ten years or so, alongside an increase in childlessness.

Like pet-lovers everywhere, many owners dote on their dogs, but in Japan the anthropomorphic privileges accorded to man’s-best friend, make them arguably the world’s most pampered pooches.

Nearly all are some kind of expensive pedigree commanding eye-watering price tags of $5,000 plus – mongrels or mutts simply don’t get a look in. Tiny lapdogs such as miniature dachshunds, poodles and chihuahua are particularly popular because most people in Tokyo — the most populous city in the world — live in small apartments, where it would be a bit of a challenge to keep a Great Dane.

In the past, dogs in Japan had to earn their keep guarding the house or killing pests. Now however, there’s a growing market in services and treats for pampered pets. If parents complain about the ‘pester-power’ of their kids, here it’s definitely ‘petser-power’ instead.

At Aoyama kennel, a King Charles spaniel is having a ‘peticure’ and cut and blow dry. Business is booming like never before says owner Rie Shimozono, whose family has been in the business for fifty years. Her salon sells expensive lotions and potions, as well as sourcing puppies from breeders.

The pet industry is now estimated to be worth more than a trillion yen a year ($10 billion) and has expanded into gourmet dog food stores, hot spring resorts, yoga classes and restaurants where dogs sit on chairs to eat specially prepared organic meals. In his one-room flat in a Tokyo suburb, Jiro Akiba feeds some treats to his dog Kotaro, a miniature dachshund, weighing only 3.4 kg. His name means ‘first born son’. “He’s like a first baby for us, so that’s why we decided to call him Kotaro,” says Jiro, who readily talks about the dog being a child substitute for him and his partner. “It’s good to have a dog if you don’t have a baby, because it is quite fun to take care of him like a baby.”

Jiro would have liked to have children, but his partner, (a freelance editor), wants to keep working, so doesn’t want to have a baby.

“In Japanese society, it’s really hard for women to have a baby and keep a job… so my girlfriend decided against having a baby, and that’s why we have a dog instead.”

Jiro says he thinks this makes economic sense, given that the cost of living is so high in Tokyo, housing and education fees are expensive, taxes are high and with the economic recession of the last two decades, salaries have been static for a long time.

Yet despite this economic stagnation, the number of dogs continues to rise, and people seem happy to spend any spare money they do have on photo sessions, massages, and all manner of treats for their four-legged ‘babies’. The average fertility rate is now 1.39 children per woman — well below the number needed to keep the population stable. Japan has, in effect, a self- imposed one-child policy. “The most important reason for Japan’s declining birth-rate is less sex,” says Dr Kunio Kitamara, the disarmingly direct Director of Japan’s Family Planning Research Centre. He has been conducting annual surveys that indicate that the nation’s libido has been steadily lagging in the last decade. The birth rate has declined, but fewer contraceptives are being used and there are fewer abortions and lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases. “Why?” asks Dr Kitamara: “less sex!”

These days, his research shows that almost half of married couples have sex less than once a month, and ‘young people dislike sexual intercourse’. Surprisingly, his latest data from 2010 showed that 32 percent of young men dislike sex because ‘they are afraid of failure and rejection by women’.

Unimpressed by a generation of young men dismissed as ‘herbivorous’, many ‘ grass-eating’ Japanese women are shunning marriage. Sixty-percent of women in their mid- to late 20s, are single, and seventy percent of unmarried women don’t even have a boyfriend. In Japan marriage is still more or less a prerequisite for having children — only 2% of children are born outside wedlock.

One young man we spoke to had dressed his dog up in a white hoodie and jeans, shoes and sunglasses because, he said, he wanted his dog to look ‘cute, cool and tough’ (even though in any skirmishes with other dogs he usually lost). His proud owner said he hoped his dog’s look might attract young women, but so far he hadn’t met anyone to share his life with. “I wish I could meet someone like that,” he said.

Economic stagnation has hit young men particularly hard. More than ten million people aged between 20 and 34 still live with their parents. Rather cruelly known as ‘parasite singles’, they’re forced to escape to Japan’s love hotels if they want privacy. They can’t afford to get married or start a family themselves, but for the odd luxury, mobiles phones, foreign travel, or treats for their dogs, they can — and do — splash out.

Smart buggies and designer doggie-bags are essential for any self-respecting dog like Jiro’s miniature dachshund Kotaro. “My dog, really hates to go out with his feet,” says Jiro. “Kotaro doesn’t like walking at all.”

For dogs in urgent need of exercise after a lifetime spent pushed around or carried, there are special spas and onsens (or hotsprings) for dogs, which look identical to the ones for humans. For $100 a session, an attendant in a wetsuit will give Kotaro one-to-one swimming lessons, relaxing bubble baths, body massages using aromatherapy oils, deep pore cleansing and mud packs, and even flossing or manicure services. Many dogs are ‘regulars’ who come at least once a week – running up annual bills of $5,000 or more.

Outside Shibuya railway station is Tokyo’s busiest intersection, where two and a half million pedestrians swarm over the famous scramble crossing every day. A popular meeting place amongst the crowds is the small statue of Hachiko, a dog who is said to have waited faithfully at the station for his late master every day from 1925 to 1935. It’s hard to believe it among the crowds milling around Hachiko’s statue but Japan’s population is shrinking fast. The latest government projections show if current trends continue today’s population of 128 million will fall to 43 million over the next century — a staggering decrease of two thirds.

Ryuichi Kaneko, Deputy Director of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, says that although many developed countries are also struggling to come to terms with declining birth rates, no country has ever experienced such a precipitous decline on this scale before. It’s both the speed at which the birth rate is falling and the change in age composition, that is creating the country’s demographic time bomb. Japan has the world’s longest life expectancy, and this longevity combined with the falling birth rate, means Japan’s demographics are becoming more and more lopsided. As the work force shrinks, fewer young people will have to carry the burden of looking after a growing number of elderly.

Successive Japanese governments have tried to boost the birth rate by introducing maternity leave, increasing child benefits, and providing nursery places, but to no avail.

“The problem is much more complicated than first appears,” says Mr Kaneko, and although he says he has no scientific evidence, he believe there is a link between Japan’s lower birth rate and the growing number of dogs.

Despite the fact that more women have jobs in Japan these days, private companies are generally reluctant to make allowances for mothers. Sixty percent of women give up working after having their first child. The women of Japan, like eye surgeon Toshiko Horikoshi, have responded with what amounts to a baby strike.

Women are often told that they cannot have both a career and children and they have to choose, says Toshiko. “When I was training, my boss actually told me if you want to become a good doctor, you have to avoid having a child or you will ruin your career.”

Toshiko was once married and her husband was keen to have children, she says. But she was studying hard to become a doctor and had to work very long hours. One evening when she came home late, her husband hit her, she says, because dinner was not on the table. She lost the baby she was carrying and they divorced. Since then, she’s built up a successful career and lives happily with her two dogs.

“Having a good time with my dogs is very important to me,” she says.

When the unthinkable happens, there are even temples where dead dogs are laid to rest with full Buddhist rites: a deluxe funeral and cremation ceremony can cost $8,000 or more.

“I find these days people grieve more for their pets than for parents or grandparents,” says a monk at a thousand-year old temple in a Tokyo suburb. “It is because pets are just like their child, so it is like losing a child.”

One dog owner had cried for a week after the loss of his pet, but only cried for a day when his parents died.

JAPAN’S population fell by a record number last year and in the wake of the earthquake and nuclear disasters, The National Institute of Population Research is expecting there to be a further decline in births this year, says Ryuichi Kaneko.

“We realised that we are living in dangerous times,” he says. “Many young people are even more hesitant to have children now.”

Jiro agrees, saying that most Japanese people worry about the future and the possibility of further earthquakes and disasters.

So what are the long-term implications of these population trends, when the government is already struggling to boost the economy and rein in the soaring costs of care in the world’s most rapidly ageing society?

Ryuichi Kaneko believes there will be no easy remedy for Japan’s low fertility rate, given the severity of the economic situation in the country and the lack of resources available.

Jiro says that although the government has tried to change the system to encourage young couples to have babies, it isn’t enough. Many of the incentives, such as child benefit are too inconsistent and subject to frequent political change to encourage people like him to start a family. He says he knows that not having children will impact on his future.

When he travels on the train at weekends, he sees pensioners enjoying their retirement, and going to nice restaurants with their families. “They don’t have to worry about their future or lack of money, but I cannot see a bright future for myself like this in old age. We will have to provide for our old age by ourselves, because there will be no other way.”

“We all – companies, the government, people young and old need to think seriously about this problem, ” says Ryuichi Kaneko, “Or Japan will have a very hard time”, and its very existence could be threatened.

Others, of course, don’t share his pessimism. Perhaps fewer people would be no bad thing for these over-crowded islands. There may be the option of more immigration; there’s not been much so far, and this is a hugely sensitive political issue. One thing is certain, everything Japan has tried so far has failed to arrest its demographic decline. Fresh thinking will be needed to persuade more Japanese that in the long-term, man’s best friend can be no substitute for man himself.