Sexlessness in Japanese Fiction

This episode is marked mature.

Today we'll explore two trends in contemporary Japanese fiction:

• Protagonists who don’t want to have sex
• And women who want to have babies anyway.

To take a closer look at these trends, we’re going to ask a couple of questions about contemporary Japan:

• What is “celibacy syndrome”? Does it even exist?
• What role does motherhood play in a shrinking society?
• And how do sexlessness and motherhood play out in 21st-century Japanese fiction?

We’ll end with a closer look at Mieko Kawakami’s best-selling novel, Breasts and Eggs.

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

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