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The story
Marriage researcher Kazuhisa Arakawa, writing for Toyo Keizai Online, presented data showing that more than half of men under 30 have zero romantic experience, and explored why young people are “canceling” not just marriage, but romance itself. When the article was reposted to 5ch’s News Express+ board, it drew a wide range of responses — skepticism about the statistics, pushback along the lines of “normal guys who go to college and get jobs date and marry just fine,” and personal anecdotes touching on how hard it is to confess your feelings and the financial risks of divorce. Since romantic experience varies so much from person to person, the thread ended up dominated by posters pointing out the gap between the statistics and their own lived experience.
More Than 50% of Men Under 30 Have “Zero Romantic Experience”… The Real Reason Young People Are “Canceling” Not Just Marriage, But Romance Itself | Toyo Keizai Online
Published: 2026/09/10 07:45
Kazuhisa Arakawa — Marriage/Singles Researcher, Columnist
Source: toyokeizai.net / Read the original article here
What people said
with the falling birthrate, will small and mid-size sash (window/door frame) manufacturers in rural areas lose business? Go under?
Turns out the sash guy was married (^▽^)/
Can't be helped anymore. That's just the tide of the times.
You seriously believe that?
If you just go to college and have a normal job, you date and get married as a matter of course.
The only ones with zero dating experience around me are creepy otaku with no social skills.
Physics-wise, it's around the point where Ranze Etou becomes one vertex of the love triangle.
he looked pretty annoyed.
there really is a job for everyone, huh.
Studying singlehood is basically like studying insects, I guess.
— the difficulty level is nothing like it used to be.
A consent form isn't even reliable to begin with.
If milady later claims 'I was forced to sign it!', it's basically void anyway.
Do you get why she gets mad?
Because she makes it blatantly obvious she's angry.
Oh, misread that — you meant the reason. She probably feels like she's being seen as cheap, or treated carelessly.
You really feel your own values shift.
Encountering different values is basically the essence of entertainment — your whole life turns into entertainment.
That's such an extrovert's way of thinking.
Entertainment you can't reset must get exhausting though.
I'm done with this.
Confessing out of nowhere in real life just makes you a boundary-ignoring weirdo.
When an average person copies the moves of some high-spec hot guy or beautiful heroine from a romcom manga, of course they get treated like a boundary-ignoring weirdo in real life — that's fiction, not reality.
Normally, before confessing, you invite her to a private one-on-one meal or outing first, to feel out whether there's any interest.
If she keeps turning you down — even with a smile, even citing 'bad timing' — that means there's no interest.
If there IS interest, even when she says 'not that day,' she'll come back with 'but how about this day?' and name a specific date herself so she doesn't lose the chance.
A real-life confession is something you only attempt after you've built up a relationship of going to private one-on-one meals or outings together several times.
He was just made to believe that's how it has to be.
Poor guy.
How did you even find out he's a virgin?
10 of them are 180cm.
10 of them are 160cm.
What's the average height?
How many people are exactly average height?
340cm! All 20 of them! ＾q＾ (joking — adding the heights instead of averaging them)
That's not a normal distribution though.
Late-life divorce is brutal.
Your investment gains get taken, half your pension gets taken.
Your severance pay gets cleaned out too.
It's bad enough that there are scumbag lawyers out there literally telling wives,
'Divorce him before he spends his severance pay, so you can grab your full share of it' — lol.
That kind of risk has really come to the forefront now —
put up with the marriage, finish having kids, then get tossed aside.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Worth keeping in mind as context: Kazuhisa Arakawa is a marriage/singles researcher who has been consistently putting out commentary on this exact theme. The rise in the rate of zero romantic experience has itself been flagged periodically in official statistics too, such as the government’s Basic Survey on Birth Trends, and this Toyo Keizai piece appears to be part of that ongoing narrative. Where the thread split was between posters who blame the lack of experience on “young people’s own passivity” and those who point to “environmental factors, like the difficulty of confessing feelings or shifting expectations from women.” Several posts also raised worries about asset division and severance pay in divorce — a point that isn’t obvious from the original article alone, showing how the conversation about avoiding romance runs straight into wariness about marriage itself. What exactly “zero romantic experience” means in the statistics was never pinned down in the thread, and that ambiguity may be part of what’s driving the gap between the numbers and people’s gut sense of reality.
※This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “More Than 50% of Men Under 30 Have “Zero Romantic Experience”… The Real Reason Young People Are Canceling Not Just Marriage, But Romance Itself.”
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