Inter Press Service - September 20, 2002
Suvendrini Kakuchi

"I have heard about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. But my boyfriend does not like to use condoms all the time and I love him too much to force him to do so," she says.

The increasing sexual activity of today's youth and their lax protection methods are leading to an HIV/AIDS explosion in Japan, say medical researchers and activists. Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven club of richest nations where AIDS cases are on the increase.

"Surveys on youth indicate an alarming forecast for the next few years," says Masako Kihara, assistant professor at the Graduate School of Medicine at Kyoto University.

Three years ago, Kihara, an expert on AIDS protection along with her husband Masahiko, focused her research on gender and youth, a sector she describes as most vulnerable to the fatal disease.

"I was finding out that young people and women are at high risk due to a variety of social changes here that are not accompanied by a greater awareness of prevention of HIV and STDs," she explains.

Kihara says that Japan's rapid industrialisation has indeed eroded many traditional values that restrict women to the roles of wives and mothers. But research indicates that while women have begun to delay marriage and have more freedom today, this transformation has not changed the old rules that still pressure them to conform to men.

In addition, Kihara explains activists are up against the mistaken belief that AIDS is a disease that belongs to the West or Africa. "The media portrays the disease as a foreign problem, not a national issue, which is making it harder to fight against," she says.

Various surveys conducted by the husband and wife team show while the Japanese have access to sophisticated medical system, they have not been educated enough on protecting themselves from sexual diseases.

"The issue of protection is only recently being accepted by the government," says Kihara. She is working with the health ministry on a new AIDS prevention programme, established in April last year, to study youth and sex workers and clients.

Asked why they do not use condoms, the male youth in Kihara's questionnaires replied that it was "too tedious" and would detract from sexual pleasure. Her study on middle-school girls, revealed that they trusted their boyfriends and did not believe they would infect them.

At the same time, young people were becoming sexually active with more partners, a combination that increases the risks for the spread of STDs and HIV.

"Our surveys showed young women in their teens and twenties have had more than five partners during their sexual life. They also hesitate to ask their partners to use condoms in order to protect themselves from HIV or other sexually transmitted disease," Kihara says.

According to official statistics, there were 240 AIDS new cases and 435 HIV-positive cases nationwide as of September 2001, the highest annual rate yet. Likewise, more than 60 percent of the new cases were detected among people in their twenties.

Japan has 12,000 full-blown AIDS patients, of which 80 percent are men. Experts predict that the number could reach between 30,000 and 50,000 by 2010, given the lack of awareness about the pandemic.

Figures compiled by Kihara reveal that up until last year, the rate of STDs in those 20 and younger was below 30 percent, but this increased to more than 40 percent last year. The figures are backed by numerous surveys, including one that covered 210 couples in Tokyo and showed that only 59.3 percent said they used condoms.

In another survey, more than 4,500 second-year high school students in Japan showed that 12.4 percent had more than one partner the previous year.

A similar study of high school students showed girls reporting as many sexual partners as boys - 52.9 percent of male respondents and 51.6 percent of girls were dating more than one partner. The survey also revealed 20.6 percent of the boys and 18.1 percent of the girls claimed to have had four or more partners.

Kihara says her surveys followed the decline in condom sales in Japan. The health ministry reports that 683 million condoms were distributed domestically in 1993, but the number fell to 590 million in 1995 and 497 million in 1999. These figures, experts say, reflect reports of increasing STD cases.

Yoshiaki Kumamoto, head of the Japanese Association for Sexual Health Medicine, shows the rate of chlamydia infection reported by clinics among women 20 and 24 years was 1,256 per 100,000 or about 1.3 percent. The rates were higher among sex workers, whose rate of infection was 17 percent in another survey by Kumamoto.

The same survey showed 49 percent of teenage girls were infected with STDs.

Nozomi Mizushima who works for Sex Work and Sexual Health (SWOSH), a grassroots group, asserts: "Services providing non-vaginal sex such as oral sex are increasing in Japan. Without the regular use of condoms, the sex worker is highly vulnerable to HIV and STDs."

A SWOSH survey of 95 sex workers in 2001 reveals that while the majority protect themselves, 70 percent do not ask customers to use condoms because they are ordered not to do so by their bosses.

Various programmes have been launched across Japan in the last two years to raise awareness levels among youth. The government of Saitama prefecture, a growing suburb of Tokyo, started in December 2001 to hand out yellow cards with a telephone number that sexually active school children can call for advise or help.

A programme volunteer, who declined to be named, said the yellow card is aimed at helping children talk about their sexual lives with adults, a new practice in conservative Japan.

"In Japan, parents and teachers rarely talk to their children about sex and sexual protection such as the use of condoms," she says. "It is taboo socially, so providing a venue for youth to discuss the issue is a vital step in teaching them to protect themselves from disease." (END/IPS/AP/HE/HD/SK/AN/JS/02)

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