Sex Has Many Accents

By Anastasia Toufexis, with reporting by Ulla Plon/Copenhagen and Hiroko Tashiro/Tokyo

AROUND THE WORLD, THERE ARE ALMOST AS MANY WAYS TO TEACH SEX AS there are languages. At the two extremes are the conservative attitude in Japan and the bold approach in Scandinavian countries.

The Japanese seem embarrassed to discuss sex. Parents avoid the subject, though their offspring, like adolescents everywhere, are obsessed with it. "My parents aren't stiffs," allows Ayumi Suzuki, 17, from Togane, near Tokyo, "but it's just not something to talk about with them. I just talk about it with friends." Admits Yumiko Kaga, the mother of two adolescent daughters: "We never discuss sex at home. I feel we should, but . . . I do remember giving my children a book on where babies come from."

Schools are just as uncomfortable teaching about sex, though instruction is mandated beginning at age 10 or 11. But the curriculums resemble animal- reproduction lessons in biology class, with menstruation and ejaculation the primary topics. Teenagers say they learn about sex mostly from magazines and their peers.

Japanese teens are chaste compared with American youngsters. While a quarter of U.S. girls and a third of U.S. boys have had sex by age 15, in Japan it is just 4% for girls and 6% for boys.

"Why are Japanese children so good?" asks Hisayo Arai of the Japanese Association for Sex Education. "Partly because they're so busy with their college entrance examinations. Also, people are always keeping a watch on each other." While there are no religious taboos against premarital sex, Japanese culture has strongly urged youngsters, particularly girls, to wait until marriage. That tradition is slipping, however, because the average age for marriage among women has risen to 26, from 24 in 1970.

Whether adolescents become sexually active seems to depend to a large extent on peer pressure at a particular school. Some schools go so far as to ban dating, but at others "it's embarrassing if you haven't had sex, and you're under pressure to lose your virginity quickly," says Tsunetsugu Munakata, associate professor of health at Tsukuba University. "At one school I heard students would go to love hotels in their uniforms," declares Tetsuya Iizuka, 19, who lost his virginity four years ago, an experience "that made me the center of attention in high school."

In contrast to Japan's youngsters, Scandinavia's teens almost take sex for granted. "There is not much talk about sex between teenagers," notes Stefan Laack of the Swedish Association for Sex Information, "yet it is widely accepted that they sleep with their boyfriends or girlfriends in their homes."

Scandinavians believe that teens may be more receptive to sex ed at school than at home. "When teenagers get in contact with their sexuality, they are about to break loose from their parents," says Laack. "This is only natural and shouldn't be disturbed."

Rather than confining instruction to special classes, schools integrate lessons throughout the curriculum. In Denmark sexual matters must be discussed whenever appropriate in any class. So too in Sweden, where sex ed has been compulsory since 1956. Starting when the children are between ages 7 and 10, it is formally incorporated into different subjects. "In biology, for example, the physical side is discussed," explains Peter Karlberg of Sweden's Ministry of Education. Courses that cover geography, history or politics tackle ethics and gender roles. In Finnish schools, all 15-year-olds receive an introductory sexual package put together by the Population and Family Welfare Federation. Its contents: an information brochure, a condom and a cartoon love story.

The intense preparation has not pushed youngsters to having sex earlier. In Sweden youngsters typically lose their virginity at age 17, exactly the same age as 15 years ago.