Complete and Creative

Why Does Japan Have So Much Porn? (1/2)

Where to begin?

Well, for the few who don’t know already, Japan is famous for its fantastic sex industry. I use the word “fantastic” in its literal sense here, as in “relating to fantasy.” The Land of the Rising Sun also produces mountains of pornography that is famous for being distinct from the Western variety and the most notorious in Asia.

Japan is a country of ironies, and its conservative society going hand-in-hand with its thriving culture of adult entertainment is but one example.

[This is where I would usually have a picture, but I didn’t think anything appropriate for the article would be appropriate for the website.]

Before I go any further, hey, fellas, just to get the record straight: Not all Japanese women sound the way they do in those videos you download all the time.

Now that I’ve busted that myth, let’s go on with this exceedingly interesting subject for which many men travel all the way to Japan.

Unmarried men in Japan don’t have enough sex.

I’m talking about the schoolboys growing up unaccustomed to talking to girls, the overachievers who have been driven by their parents to focus on nothing but school and career, and the otaku who frequent Akihabara, Tokyo’s Electric Town, on a daily basis (in America, we call them geeks and nerds). The schoolboys and the overachievers basically fall under the same broad category. Excluding the ones who attend single-gender schools, both have the opportunity to meet girls at school, but the schoolboys don’t know how and the overachievers have no time for it. They naturally still lust and wonder about girls. They need to have their outlet.

The otaku are the worst. They prefer digitized and animated women to real women. Some videogames, which are only sold in Japan, feature female digital models that pose and strip as the (almost always) male player wills it. This is only the softcore stuff. I won’t go into the more adult games. These men would rather read pornographic comics and watch hentai (Japanese animated porn) than speak to real women. Sure, the likes of Lara Croft, Chun Li, the girls of Dead or Alive, and Blood Rayne are more anatomically perfectly developed than any real women could realistically ever hope to be, but they. Are. Not. Real.

Married Japanese couples don’t have enough sex.

It is said that in Japan men marry twice, once to their wives, once to their jobs. So chances are, Japanese women are marrying married men. You might ask why women just don’t avoid that predicament, find men who aren’t married to their jobs. But most Japanese women look for men who match the sanko (”three highs”: high salary, high height, and high education). If you’ve got a lucrative job, then it’s most likely one that requires you to be away from home–and your wife–most of the time.

Many married couples do not spend enough time together, the wife sleeping in a cold bed, the husband staying at the workplace to complete his duties. Sometimes, men rent apartments closer to their companies so they can get more sleep, going home (which can be a two-and-a-half-hour train ride, during which the men might read pornographic comics if they’re not sleeping) only on weekends, if not every month. Moreover, most porn actresses (called AV–adult video–idols in Japan) are more attractive to men than their own wives are. Where do you think porn comes into all this?

On this note, I’m glad to say that the next generation of Japanese women is less inclined to tolerate their husbands being away at work so often.

to be continued…