really could someone explain to me how this will really change the economy...what, we'll have like 8 train station attendants waiting to respond to a drunk salaryman call instead of 13?

I believe this story is between married couples.

With quite a few good, positive, family-oriented exceptions (and it is important for us to realize that there are plenty of such cases), once they get married they don't have sex between themselves after newly weds' romantic and horny months or years pass, especially if husbands are salary men working corporate jobs. But they do have sex. With who? Outside marriage. Men work until late, but not always. They go out drinking, and there are several ways to get laid. Wives don't just stay home all day all week all month. They don't behave like married women 30 or even 20 years ago. Both men and women utilize their cell phones, internet, and other means to meet people for sex.

"Se-fu-re" = Sex Friend

In another words, Japanese aren't sexless all that badly. Sexlessness exists in marriage, not in the extramarital realm.

Economically, the whole Japanese system - employment lives and taxes - just do not allow positive decision making on the part of married couple. If women want to work after they get married, they would face higher tax rate after only making, what $10K in addition to their husbands make, or something like that. Once kids arrive to the household, they have to deal with such an expensive deal to raise them. I don't know if they get tax credits per kid like they do here in the US, but even if there are credits, it probably is too small of a deal that it wouldn't make much of an advantage, if you can call it that way.

Japanese corporations are just like ancient warlords. Ever since those historic era, they tend to think that a man should be married and be well supported to become a dedicated, hard-working samurai who would die for the cause. It still the same. The result is as soon as a single salary man gets married, they put him to work harder. Here, single men and women are the kind of workforce that companies can use without hearing much about "My wife needs to do this and I need to go with her" or "My husband is doing this and I need to be at home today". In case of Japan, married women pick up virtually all the home-related responsibilities, while their husbands can concentrate on their work at corporations, literally single-mindedly.

In the meanwhile, Japanese women are getting fed up with the aspect of marriage lives like this. They can live with their parents while they can stash up good savings, so that they can travel abroad, pick up some French boys and make it good, as opposed to living the expected lives of typical housewives. Some Japanese women just get married, play housewives and fuck around during the daytime. Some women do this with good planning ahead, even planning before they meet any marriage candidates. Why? Because, mostly, corporate exempt, full-time workers (salary men) are still relatively stable and secure.

Also, this head line - "Japanese too stressed for sex" mostly applies for stressed corporate workers and others, meaning mostly men. Women don't have to deal with that kind of work load, and they have pretty healthy sexual drives.

Just my personal observations...

"sad, sad. where will this country be in 20, 30 or even 50 years?"

Enh. Japan is not in danger of running out of people.

If what Taro says is true about salarymen and their wives,.I have this entire conundrum solved.
If men are too stressed to have sex, and the women have active sex lives, perhaps the women are all just getting together and having girly sex.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it!