The data on married couples were among the findings of a wider survey of 3,000 people aged between 16 and 49 conducted at the end of last year. The association received responses from more than 1,200 people, including 655 married men and women.

A record high 47.2% of married men and women said they were in sexless marriages, up 2.6 percentage points from the previous poll in 2014, the association said, and significantly higher than the 31.9% recorded when it conducted its first survey of the nation’s bedroom habits in 2004.

“The tendency of being in a sexless marriage has increased further,” Japanese media quoted the association’s president, Kunio Kitamura, as saying.

Some experts have cast doubt on the notion that Japan has suffered a collective loss of libido, and point out that its people are not alone among industrialised nations in struggling to find the time for intimacy.