JAPAN: Experts Put New Spin on Sex Education

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, May 27 2004 (IPS) - Japanese health experts and officials are revising sex education in schools so they focus more on individual teaching yet accept traditional Asian values – pragmatic changes that they hope will make the subject more interesting and relevant to young people.

”Japanese children today know more, are freer with sex and are thus vulnerable to a host of sex-related problems. Current teaching methods do not take into consideration this urgency,” says Hirotaka Kujrigaoka of the Tokyo Board of Education.

Thus far, the policy of the Education, Science and Technology Ministry has been to teach students about physical changes in the male and female bodies, pregnancy, healthy gender concepts and family values.

”But from now on, we realise the need to go beyond this and work on problems more realistically,” says Masako Yuzawa, an official in charge of health and nutrition education in the ministry.

In a May report, the government said sex education classes, which begin at the third grade, have run into problems with parents who have protested the use of graphic material to teach subject matters such as sexual intercourse.

Officials also concede that this approach has not been effective in stopping rising teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases among Japanese teenagers.

”General sex education can be harmful to some children in Japan, where traditional values have not allowed parents to talk openly with their children. There is a need to carefully consider the individual growth of children for the best effects,” says Yuzawa.

Indeed, surveys indicate that Japanese children today are very different from their counterparts two decades ago.

Not least, the education ministry reports, the build of the newer generation of Japanese is bigger. Their bodies mature faster than the older generation, and even when compared to parents born in the post-war years.

For example, Japanese girls today start to menstruate at between 10 and 12 years old, at least two years earlier than their mothers.

Sexual activity is also starting earlier. Official statistics show that 30 percent of third-year high school students say they have experienced sex at least once – this contrasts with the situation two decades ago, when youngsters became sexually active at 20 years of age.

The revision of sex education also comes amid worrisome statistics from government surveys that show that despite increased and more discussions on pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, teenage abortion and sexually transmitted diseases among youth continue to rise annually.

Almost 50,000 abortions were officially reported by young women below 20 years old in 2002, up from 27,838 in 1994.

Likewise, youth between 10 to19 years comprise 29.8 percent of new cases of chlamydia reported two years ago.

This situation reflects the impact of the difficulty of talking about sex to children and young people, who need it most, says Tomoyuki Shimizu, a high school teacher who is in charge of sex education.

”Most children think they already know about sex through the Internet or magazines available freely in the market,” he says. ”A key hurdle is to able to gain their trust.”

He points to the spread of ‘enjo kosai’ or compensated dating – where young girls are paid by older men for dates in Japan and other affluent Asian countries – as a sign of the breakdown of the community and communication with teenagers.

Health expert Dr Masako Kihara, who teaches at the graduate school of Kyoto University, says that teachers of sex education in Asia, including Japan, have to be able to walk the fine line between cultural values – where conservative attitudes prevent the open discussion of sexual issues – and modern lifestyles, where sex is widely advertised.

Kihara, a pioneer in sex education in Japan, points out that while the sex education curriculum allows intercourse to be only discussed in high school, her research indicates that 70 percent of primary school students are already aware of the topic.

”’This gap must be eradicated. But at the same time, we must be careful to consider family values where some protected young children might not be ready for explicit information,” she says.

Kihara advocates launching periodic questionnaires in schools to gauge the interest in sexual activity among students before developing a basic curriculum.

”Attitudes, acceptance of sex, curiosity, experience, various family backgrounds must all be taken into consideration in sex education. After that, the school nurse or counsellor can work with individual children to teach them according to their needs,” she explains.

The early use of condoms in sex education remains a controversial issue in Japan. Many conservative parents argue that the display of condoms and other contraceptives is against Asian traditional values and could prompt children into early sexual activity.

But Kihara recommends getting over this barrier by creatively focusing studies in school on sexual health rather than on condoms. ”Students must be told that unprotected sex can be harmful to their health even with a regular partner, which makes them aware of the need to use a condom,” she points out. Meanwhile, sex educationists are looking into community programmes around reproductive health and more discussions with parents in schools in a bid to stress that these issues are as important as academic subjects.

In fact, Yoshio Hata, spokesman for the Japanese Association of Sex Education, calls for a ”network in sex education between family and school” to protect teenagers from risky sexual behaviour.