Back in 2019, we lamented the (fortunately temporary) closure of Osaka's red-light district Tobita Shinchi in a bid to stave off a crackdown by the authorities ahead of the G-20 summit. (Because the 2020 Olympics ended up being held in 2021 and with basically no visitors, the Tokyo Games ultimately did not involve as much of a crackdown on porn and sex services as expected.
There's nothing we hate more than hypocrisy and trying to hide what society is truly like, but Osaka is at it again.
With next year's expo fast approaching, Osaka police have raided a strip club called the Toyo Show ...
Oh no. One of those surveys has appeared.
Despite our best efforts to celebrate the diverse and exciting sexual landscape in Japan, these perennial surveys reporting on sexlessness in the country get lots more attention and tarnish the reputation (probably made worse by our own regurgitation of them on these digital pages).
Of course, decline in sexual activities between long-term partners is common across the world and so is a decline in dating and sex among the young, though the reporting on it in Japan tends to veer toward the orientalist.
This latest survey is a bit different, because ...
The revelation that the head of Japan's third largest opposition party, Yuichiro Tamaki, has been having an affair with a former gravure model, Miyuki Koizumi, sparked a media frenzy at the start of this week.
The tabloids have continued to pump out stories about the affair, much of which is just speculation.
Of course, adulterous politicians is a story as old as the hills but this one has has longer legs because Tamaki is so prominent right now (his party arguably holds the keys to keeping the minority Liberal Democratic Party government in power) -- and this is surely why the tabloids ...
Continuing a time-honored tradition of using up-and-coming celebrities for its models, the leading Japanese lingerie brand Peach John's new choice of model is announcer Kasumi Mori.
Mori has recently established herself as a model and general celebrity, hoping to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Minami Tanaka, who launched a new career as an actress on the back of a bestselling photo book. Mori also released a debut photo book earlier this year, which revels in her shapely butt and pale skin, and has remained in the public eye through regular TV appearances.
Her shoot for Peach John ...
We are used to Japanese politicians, both male and female, having affairs with hostesses, party workers, foreign musicians, and even other lawmakers. But what about gravure idols?
In a case that recalls Kensuke Miyazaki, who had advocated for fathers to take paternity leave but was caught having an affair with a gravure model while his wife (another lawmaker) was giving birth, a tabloid has broken a scoop on Democratic Party for the People leader Yuichiro Tamaki, who is alleged to have been having an affair with a former gradol.
Flash has revealed that the 55-year-old Tamaki has been ...
We already wrote about this story back in September but now the mainstream foreign media is starting to pick up the survey by the Japanese Association for Sex Education, which examines the rate of sex and other forms of intimacy among junior and senior high school students.
Perhaps prompted by the publication of the full version of the survey and new reports about it in the Japanese media, liberal bastion the Guardian recently ran an article bemoaning the falling numbers of male Japanese school students who had never kissed.
As noted in September, the survey results indicate that only one ...
Here's a case that ticks all the boxes about the current moral panic.
A concafe ("concept cafe") staffed by men in Kabukicho, Tokyo, is accused of exploiting vulnerable female customers.
Concafes can be innocuous themed cafes but are often staffed only by men, making them essentially a kind of host club (similar to how girls' bars are like a cheap hostess club). The customers come for the fantasy created by theme (butlers, doctors, private boys' boarding school students, etc.) and the men who work there.
At this one, 32-year-old Takuma Ono is alleged to have tried to force a 20-year-old ...
As we write this, Japan is heading to the polls in an election that might see the ruling LDP lose its majority in the House of Representatives.
Of course, we're less interested in the podgy faces of the LDP policos, most of whom should be off collecting their pensions by now instead of running the country, and more in the possible success of candidates like ex-gravure model Chisato Morishita, still a hottie at age 43 (and unmarried too).
She's already failed once in her bid to win a seat. Will she succeed this time and brighten up the stale corridors of power with her slinky charms?
This ...
Yamagata Education Board announced on October 17 that it had suspended a foreign assistant language teacher for six months for taking photos up girls' skirts in Tokyo.
The unnamed man in his thirties works at high schools in the prefecture.
The teacher is accused of using his phone to take pics up women's skirts on escalators in Tokyo Station and a mall on a trip to the capital last month. At the mall, another woman realized and alerted a security guard, who was able to apprehend the foreign and call police.
He was taken for questioning by Tokyo police, who then told his workplace.
"I let ...
A young Chilean woman recently provoked a lot of ire in Japan when she posted a video of herself doing pull-ups on the gate of a Shinto shrine.
The influencer Marimar Pérez-Banus subsequently issued an apology and deleted the video, but we will probably not get the same from another young lady who posed semi-naked at a popular tourist attraction in Japan.
As netizens have discovered, there are actually lots of pics of foreigners doing silly things at places like Fushimi Inari, a Shinto shrine in Kyoto famous for its vast numbers of red torii gates that form labyrinthine corridors.
Here is ...
