TOKYO, Nov 30 (AFP) - Japanese condom sales are sagging as a passion for the Internet leads the Japanese to choose unprotected sex, if any sex at all, the nation's largest condom manufacturer said ahead of World Aids Day on Wednesday.
Domestic shipments have shriveled 43 percent from the peak in 1980 of 737 million to just 419 million condoms in 2003, according to the latest health ministry data.
Industry experts said omnipresent pornography in the hi-tech country meant fewer people were having sex -- and among those who still are, fewer are using condoms.
"Since the advent of the broadband Internet in Japan, people can connect the entire night without having any extra charges," said a spokeswoman for Okamoto Industries, which accounts for almost half the condom market in Japan.
"Those people who cannot break away from their computers are not able to have sex," she said.
Youngsters are also getting the wrong impression from pornography, in which condom use is rare, she said.
"Schools teach sex education but they don't go as far as the act itself," the spokeswoman said. "As a result, young people are learning about sex from adult videos. There aren't any scenes where the actors are using condoms."
But among those who practise safe sex, Japanese businesses have found a robust market for discerning customers.
Condomania, a colorful condom shop with outlets in Tokyo's hip Harajuku, Shibuya and Odaiba districts, said its sales have increased 10 percent from a year ago, having been able to puncture the embarrassment associated with condom-buying.
"Until Condomania, condoms were sold in Japan only in drugstores and were wrapped in paper so you couldn't see the package," said Kei Shigyo, a spokesman for Condomania's parent firm, Sea Road International.
Since its start on AIDS Day in 1993, Condomania has put its product in packages that look fashionable or indistinguishable from candy. One looks like a pack of Lifesavers, while others resembling lollipops come in a rainbow of colors.
"If it falls out of one's bag, you can't tell they are condoms," he said.
Customer Tomoko Hatakeyama, a 23-year-old student, said she shops here for the variety, not to avoid embarassment.
"There are a lot that have decorations or have interesting shapes or scents," she said.
Just because condom use was falling, it did not mean people were not practising safe sex, she said.
"Even if they are not wearing condoms I think people are getting tested," she said, referring to HIV tests. "When my friends change boyfriends, they use condoms, and then go to the hospital. It's a matter of individual choice."
Although the number of Japanese infected with HIV at the end of 2003 was estimated at 12,000, a marginal figure in a population of 128 million, the United Nations said sexual transmission of the virus was growing.
"One of the characteristics in recent years is that the infection through sexual contacts in Japan is getting higher among Japanese men," said a 2004 report on Japan by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization.
A high percentage of Japanese HIV/AIDS cases are still among haemophiliacs who were given tainted blood products in the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s, the report said.
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