Countdown clock indicates when Japanese people will go extinct without more sex

[Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images]

If Japan doesn’t put more efforts into procreating, its population will go extinct. That’s according to a countdown clock, which was released by researchers at Tohoku University.

For several years, the country has been experiencing a so-called “sex crisis.” Both men and women say a lack of balance between their work and personal lives is discouraging them from wanting to procreate, which is leading to a decline in the population.

Men are working upwards of 80 hours a week, which leaves little time or energy for intimacy. Meanwhile, women are feeling the pressure to choose between having a family or a career with many of them settling for the latter.

The countdown clock considers Japan’s aging populace along with its shrinking fertility rates. Combine these two factors and the Asian nation’s doomsday will land on Aug. 16, 3766. We’re still 1,750 years away from that date so there’s still time to boost the country’s low birth rate.

Economists Hiroshi Yoshida and Masahiro Ishigaki came up with the number based on population statistics from 2014 and 2015.

A survey conducted by Japan Family Planning Association concluded that nearly 50 per cent of Japanese citizens between the ages of 18 and 49 hadn’t had sex in the past month. That’s a nearly 10-per-cent spike from a similar report conducted just two years earlier.

Japan is home to about 16 million children, a number that continues to decline.