Sex Education in Japan

Sex Educator Nojima Nami: Knowledge to Protect Japan’s Children

Society Education Family

Nearly every day there is news of a sex crime in which the victim is a child. There are even cases where a child is the perpetrator. Not a few parents worry that their own child might become the victim, or perpetrator, of a sex crime. Nojima Nami, who contends that sex education is essential to alleviate such worries, heads the Pantsu-no-kyōshitsu Academy Association for Cheerful Sex Education. Her 2018 book, Okāsan! Gakkō de wa bōhan mo sex mo hinin mo oshiete kuremasen yo! (Mom! Schools Won’t Teach Your Kid About Sex, Contraception, or How to Stay Safe!), has gone through several printings.

Uneducated Kids Are Easy Marks

It was a kidnapping incident in her neighborhood that got Nomura involved in sex education. The victim was a junior high school girl who followed a man when he asked her for “a little help.” When the kidnapping came to light, Nojima asked her two daughters, fourth and first graders, “If someone said the same thing to you, would you go with them?” Their response: “Yes, we would.” Nojima realized then that her daughters had no idea what they might get into or how dangerous it could be.

Nojima Nami’s Okāsan! Gakkō de wa bōhan mo sex mo hinin mo oshiete kuremasen yo! (Mom! Schools Won’t Teach Your Kid About Sex, Contraception, or How to Stay Safe!) is a guide for parents who want to provide their children with the sex-ed that Japan’s schools do not.
Nojima Nami’s Okāsan! Gakkō de wa bōhan mo sex mo hinin mo oshiete kuremasen yo! (Mom! Schools Won’t Teach Your Kid About Sex, Contraception, or How to Stay Safe!) is a guide for parents who want to provide their children with the sex-ed that Japan’s schools do not.

In another incident, Nojima found her daughters watching a pornographic video on their tablet. They said it was “fun,” and that they liked the nakedness and kissing. Asked how they got to the video, they said they had followed a link from one of their favorite animes. It had taken only five clicks or so to get from content for children to a pornographic site. Enter “good-looking” in the search box and you are taken to a website for “sex with good-looking guys.” Just about any search term can lead to a pornographic site of some sort.

Alarmed, Nojima single-handedly began a movement to encourage the spread of sex education. It wasn’t long before she was getting requests to speak from all over the country.

“Right from the start there was strong demand,” she says. “I didn’t run into any criticism. Mothers everywhere were secretly anxious. What if my child is a victim of a sex crime? What if my child commits a sex crime? How are you supposed to deal with a child who sees the pornography sold in a convenience store and begs you to buy the magazine with ‘the pretty lady on the cover’? There’s no one to advise you. Books on sex education are hard to find in bookstores and even libraries, and it is hard to know what sources you can trust when you search for information on the Internet. No one thinks we should leave things as they are.”

A Father Willing to Talk About Sex

Nojima says she was taught about sex from an early age by her father. His style of education was to dispense nuggets of wisdom ranging from “It doesn’t matter if your breasts aren’t big” to “Make sure you use a condom.” After she grew up and became a nurse specializing in urology, Nojima realized that what her father had taught her was not always correct. What helped, though, was that her father taught her these things as a matter of course so that she would know how to protect herself. This attitude helped them to build a close relationship in which no topic was taboo.

Nojima refers to the private parts of the body as the “swimsuit zone.” She encourages teaching children about the parts of the body they should never allow others to see or touch. (Illustration by Ogura Naomi from Nojima’s book)
Nojima refers to the private parts of the body as the “swimsuit zone.” She encourages teaching children about the parts of the body they should never allow others to see or touch. (Illustration by Ogura Naomi from Nojima’s book)

“Thanks to my father, I grew up confident that I was welcomed and loved. We were able to talk about anything in our family. Mothers often ask me, ‘What will happen if our children are taught about sex?’ They fear that their children may start to experiment with sex from an early age.”

These fears are unfounded, explains Nojima. “But that’s not what happens. Akita Prefecture, for example, used to have an abortion rate among teens that was higher than the national average. But since around 2000, when they started including sex education in the curriculum for junior and senior high schools, the abortion rate has gone down. By 2017, the number of teen abortions in the prefecture had dropped to around 7 percent of its previous level.”

Nojima is confident that the education is what did the job. “Sex-ed is education about life and love. A child who is loved will feel affirmed and confident and will be able feel empathy for others. There are hundreds of benefits to sex education and not one drawback.”

Nojima learned about sex from her father, but her book is directed at mothers. Her expectations of fathers being involved in sex education are low, she says. We asked her why.

“So far I have talked about sex education to more than 4,000 people. Sad to say, all the fathers seem to think it is something that can be ignored. Fathers never had sex education themselves and so the topic is off limits as far as they are concerned. They are also too busy with work to develop good communication with their children. When you aren’t used to talking to your kids on a daily basis, talking about sex is just too embarrassing. That’s why I am targeting the mothers. Still, if there are fathers who aren’t afraid to talk about sex and who are able to communicate and have a relationship of trust with their children, it would be great to have such fathers cover the subject with their kids.”

next: A Father’s Unfounded Fears

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