Where does the notion that sexuality holds the key to later life well-being come from? A fun­damental change has occurred in public health discourse in the past twenty years with the acknowledgment that sexual health is essential to overall health and well-being (Coleman 2010: 135). This development is linked to transformations in the concerns of […]

Whereas the gerontologists and sexual health experts I have quoted above advise couples about their sexuality, the gerontologist Araki discusses the relationships between nursing care workers and nursing home residents. She gives advice to nursing care workers on how to embrace the sexual identities and needs of older persons. Araki (2004: 59-69, 2005: 480-86) is […]

According to Araki (2010: 108), the question of how Japanese society will ‘realise the sexuality of single elders’ is one of the biggest emerging issues of aging Japanese society. Some widowed older women she surveyed expressed a desire to meet men but did not know where they could meet them. They identified a dearth of […]

Much of this literature on aging and sexuality assumes a heterosexual model of sexual relations. We get a rare insight into female-female sexual relations from the Japanese maker of pornographic films, Hamano Sachi (Hori 2011: 109), who dislocates the heteronormative model of sexuality in Lily Festival (Yurisai, 2001), her lively film about the sexuality and […]

Although Rim points a finger at the young for delegitimising senior sexuality, he places the greatest responsibility for change on the shoulders of elders themselves. He laments that, overall, older persons in South Korea are not proactive in having an optimistic attitude about, and interest in, sexual matters. In fact, they may take the view […]

Rim (2011) has published widely on the sexuality of older persons in South Korea. His goal, he says, is to raise awareness about the life-enhancing aspects of sexual activity for seniors. He states that stereotypes that older persons are asexual, or that it is abnormal for them to engage in sexual relations, are forms of […]

The sexual health educator and author, Takayanagi Michiko, has published a range of popular books and articles (Takayanagi 2004a, 2004b: 55-57, 2005, Horiguchi and Takayanagi 2010: 190-92; Kitamura and Takayanagi 2012: 190-92) on the sexuality of older persons. Her expressed goal is to liberate people from misconceptions about aging and what happens to sexuality with […]

In this section, I explore in more depth how older persons are being educated about sexuality and what purpose it is made to serve in these accounts. I do so by considering a series of related themes. The first theme is that patriarchal sexual attitudes which construct sex as a duty, and misconceptions about aging, […]

Sexual health experts and gerontologists in East Asia have been vocal in problematising the lack of public awareness about the sexuality of older persons. They have played a prominent role in shaping the dialogue around the sexual needs and rights of older persons (Komatsu et al. 2001: 41; Araki 2004: 60; Rim 2011: 34-38; Kitamura […]

Katrina L. Moore Introduction In this chapter I explore the emergence of a discourse of well-being in later life centring on the embrace of senior sexuality. This discourse is being shaped by gerontologists and sexologists in East Asia who are actively defending the rights of older persons to be recognised as sexual beings. Gerontologists claim […]