Japan has a serious sex problem, and it has nothing to do with its weird Japanese sex toys or weird bestiality video games (or maybe it does).
A survey by the Japan Family Planning Association (via Business Insider) shows that close to half the country's population aren't having sex. The Japanese media are even calling it sekkusu shinai shokogun, or in English, "celibacy syndrome."
According to the survey, 49.3 percent of people between 16 and 49 said they hadn't gotten it on in the last month.
Even more surprising, perhaps, is that many of them don't seem too worried about changing that. A 2011 study reported on in the Washington Post said that half the people in Japan are single, nearly a quarter of them aren't even interested in a romantic relationship, and more than 37 percent of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 have never had sex.
So what happens when half the people in a developed nation simply stop getting it in?
According to Nippon, it could mean 20 million less people in Japan by 2040, and according to the Post, that could wreak serious havoc on the world economy. The country, the third largest economy in the world behind the U.S. and China, is already in economic trouble with a massive national debt, and this sex thing isn't helping.
"The Japanese economy is in serious enough trouble that it could set the rest of us back. And the biggest source of that trouble is demographic: Japanese people aren't having enough kids to sustain a healthy economy," the Post reports.
Or, maybe the problem is that this super handsome gorilla is stealing all of Japan's girls:
