More than one million Japanese lock themselves up to avoid all social contacts. More than 40% of the Japanese population is single. Japan has the lowest birth rate in the world. Many Japanese young people no longer feel like having sex.
Intimacy in the broad sense of the word is available in all sizes and colors. In 2019 I visited Tokyo for two longer periods, with my focus on connection, intimacy and social contact. Keeping distance, 'social distancing' as we now know it, is and was the rule rather than the exception. It is as if Japanese society is permeated with an existential loneliness, which we as Westerners like to deny. Meanwhile, we have understood that keeping our distance serves the collective interest, and we can ask ourselves whether it is the subordination to the community that breathes Japanese society.
