Japan’s long relationship with erotica is a strange one. There is their historical relationship, and their current one, and the two could not be more different. Modern Japanese pornography is very different from their long tradition of erotic art. We have a large collection of Japanese erotic art in CenterSEE’s World Nude and Erotic Art Sampler. Let’s first take a look at traditional Japanese erotic art, then we’ll focus in on modern Japanese pornography.
No country has produced more erotica than Japan, and Japanese erotic art is some of the most explicit and some of the most unusual erotic art ever produced. What made the art erotic for Japanese people of the time is far different from the Western perspective. As did the Chinese, the Japanese also used the term Shunga for their sexually explicit art. The Japanese conventions for this art were quite different from the Chinese, though.
One of the most noticeable differences is the relative lack of nudity. Japan had communal bathing, so mere nudity just did not have as much of an erotic charge for them. Instead, there was great emphasis on the robes the couples wore, with great attention paid to the detail and the patterns.
Another and even more noticeable difference is the size of the genitalia. They are gigantic. You might be thinking that young brides would be terrified on their wedding nights after viewing the pillow books with the traditional extremely exaggerated penises. This was not the case, because with communal bathing, women had seen an actual penis or two, and would have been quite aware of the difference between the drawings and reality.
The reason for the enlarged genitals, both male and female, was part of the same attention to detail that went into drawing the robes. The drawings typically were intended to be both educational and beautiful. Within the limits of the technology of the time that allowed them to create prints, they needed to make the genitals larger so they were big enough to show off all the detail the artist added.
Decoding Japanese erotic art is difficult because they saw sex very differently from Westerners. Sex was a joyful union, not something dirty or sinful. While they were far more tolerant of homosexual imagery, Japanese culture was also deeply misogynistic, so it did not have a contemporary sex positive view of sex. Women were to be obedient and had little choice in matters of sex. They had to not only serve their husbands sexually, but they and their daughters were also expected to sexually serve their husband’s feudal overlords. In fact, a husband could be impelled to kill himself if he in any way became an embarrassment to the overlord’s enjoyment of his wife or family. Peasant girls were also expected to submit to any Samurai who wanted to take them sexually.
Before you get all Western morally superior, don’t forget that slaves in the West were regularly used for sex by their owners, and in fact it was the thing that Southern women knew never to speak of. Even so, women had probably less sexual autonomy in Japan, but historically it was not a good deal for women anywhere. Instead of getting paid less per hour than men, they should be the one’s getting paid reparations for the millennia of rape and abuse.
Another major difference between Western and Japanese art is the representation of people in power. In Western art, sexual depictions of political, military, and religious leaders was done as parody and were meant as insulting. In Japan, such sexual depictions were ways of honoring them.
The priesthood did not have celibacy. It was almost the opposite. Married women could and did have affairs with Buddhist monks, and this was acceptable because they were elites outside of the feudal structure. Affairs with anyone other than a monk or a feudal overlord could get a woman killed, but at least with a monk she had some say in the matter.
Beyond the different attitudes about sex, there are details that are lost to modern Western eyes. Even the folds of the robes could by significant. There is also lots of symbolism. For example, bonsai trees represent erect penises, plum blossoms represent virginity, a tissue represents ejaculation or someone about to ejaculate, chrysanthemums symbolized the anus, and azaleas represent homosexual love.
Censorship came to Japan as Western influence was on the rise, beginning in the 1860s. Sexual censorship dramatically increased after World War II, often at the behest of Western military leaders who were running the country.
Amazingly, Shunga was not even studied by scholars until fairly recently. The first book length overview, Sex and the Floating World, was written by Timon Screech in 1999. It was published first in Japan, where changes in the law made publication possible and legal. In fact, the first major public display of Shunga did not take place in Japan until 2015, when a British Museum collection was exhibited at Tokyo’s Eisei-Bunko Museum after being turned down by many other museums.
That is one of the great ironies of Japan. A country that once had a far more open attitude about sexuality, preserved for a long time due to Japan’s isolation, has reverted to a Western influenced negative view of sexuality so intense that not only can Shunga still be censored, they also pixelate the genitals in their porn movies and recently arrested and prosecuted a female artist for making a boat based on a digital scan of her own genitals. That experience is fascinating, and you can read more about it in our review of What is Obscenity?
That brings us to modern porn. The pixelation of the genitals can make it almost unwatchable, although you do get used to it, sort of. Because of strong privacy laws, they also have a tendency to pixelate faces, removing almost everything you might want to actually see. Breasts are okay, and so are butts, including anuses, unless you put a finger or sex toy in them, and then they tend to get pixelated. Not all Japanese porn is pixelated, but most is.
Article 21 of the Japanese Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and prohibits formal censorship, but that is overridden when it comes to sex by Article 175 of the Criminal Code of Japan. That has been interpreted to require the censorship of all sexual content. In practice, though, it is much like our obscenity laws- open to interpretation and only rarely enforced legally.
Up until the mid-1990’s, depictions of pubic hair were banned. Now it is sometimes fetishized, and the shaved look is less popular than it is in Western pornography.
Because normal sexuality was so censored, Japan has developed a number of genres as an alternative. Since penises can not be displayed, they have tentacle porn, inspired by Hokusai’s The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife. It featured the legend of the female abalone diver Tamatori, and while it may appear to be rape to Western eyes, the sex is considered consensual in Japan.
Bukkake porn features multiple men ejaculating on a woman, usually on her face. While the ejaculating penis must be pixelated, a cum covered face offers an alternative to focus on. It was introduced into Japan in the 1980s.
Gokkun is porn in which women swallow semen. It can be from the tap or from a container.
Omorashi is where a woman becomes aroused by peeing on herself, typically while dressed. It can also include arousal by having to delay relieving oneself.
Japan did not ban child pornography until 2014 (pubic hair yes, but not child porn). The themes based on schoolgirls are still extremely popular, especially in typical schoolgirl uniforms. Cheerleaders are also popular, although perhaps not as popular as in the U.S. The girls must be of legal age now, though.
While lesbian erotica, called Yuri (Girl’s Love), is popular with lesbians and men, it is not as popular as it is in the West. Even more popular is Yaoi (Boy’s Love) featuring masculine men and effeminate younger men together. The primary audience for this is women.
Japan is an extremely mysogonystic society, and women often appear to not enjoy the sex in Japanese porn. The women tend to make very high-pitched and almost child-like sex sounds, along with shouting “kimochii” (feels good) and “iku iku” (I’m coming). Japanese men (at least in their porn) generally prefer innocent, childlike, and submissive women, or women who are forced into submission. There is not a lot of emphasis placed on consent in Japanese sex scenes.
BDSM is very popular. You will also see a lot of women tied with rope in rather elaborate ways. This type of rope tying is known as Shibari.
Sex toys are also more popular in Japanese pornography. This is because of the inability to show male penises, while showing sex toys is acceptable.
You will also see a lot more sucking of male nipples. I suspect this has something to do with it giving women something to suck that won’t be pixelated. You also tend to see quite of bit of toe sucking, probably for the same reason.
It is important to understand that Japanese porn caters primarily to men and reflects fantasy, not the actual reality of how people have sex. In reality, Japanese women don’t all make high pitched sounds during sex and remain subservient.
There are some very specific clothing fetishes. Along with the schoolgirl outfits they also like one-piece blue swimsuits, maid outfits, kimonos, striped panties, and knee socks- but the real point of knee socks is to emphasize the flesh between the top of the sock and the bottom of the skirt.
There are many popular themes in Japanese pornography that are unique. Here are a few:
Time Stop. This is where time stops for the women but not for the men, so it is essentially a rape scenario. There is no attempt to make the stopping of time realistic. The women just sort of stop moving and hold sort of still, although they are easily moved around.
Stuck In. This is where women are stuck in an environment where they can not leave. Very popular are buses, as well as elevators. It does tend to be pretty rapey. The male dominance of Japanese culture tends to make most of their porn seem a bit that way.
Pop-Up. This is where penises pop up or out of holes in normal environments, typically an average office. The women tend to be fully clothed, and are not particularly surprised when a penis pops out of a hole in a desk, wall, bookshelf, or anything else a male body can be hidden behind. When it does pop out, she simple must suck it, typically to orgasm (his, not hers). It is interesting in that it completely eliminates the male body with the exception of the penis, which is usually pixelated.
Invisible. This often takes place in a classroom but can be anywhere. A man or several men wear either a black hood or a skintight black bodysuit, rendering them, apparently, invisible. They go around having sex with women who usually do not react to them and continue doing what they were doing while the man is having sex with them. The others in the room usually do not react.
Game Show. There are a number of “game shows” that include sexually explicit activity. The strangest are the ones involving family members, who have sex with body parts revealed only through cutouts in a wall. While I can’t follow it that well, it seems like family members typically lose by accidentally having sex with their own family member instead of another player’s family member.
CFNM. This stands for “Clothed Female Naked Male” and is a popular genre in Western porn, but it seems to be even more popular in Japanese porn.
Massage. Massage videos are very popular in the U.S., especially the Nuru massage videos that use an almost gelatinous massage oil. Nuru massage originated in Japan, and massage videos are also very popular there. We will be doing a feature on this topic in the near future.
While Japanese porn is typically, but not always, censored, it still offers a very uniquely Japanese take on sexuality. The world of sexual diversity never ceases to amaze.
In Part 2 we will look at Japanese games, Anime, and comics.