It was surely inevitable.
We all know that used panties is an infamous and genuine fetish in Japan (and elsewhere, of course), whose needs are served by various products sold by major companies as well as individuals hoping to make a quick yen.
Face masks were already a big part of people's lives in Japan even pre-pandemic, especially during flu or pollen allergy seasons. But now they are almost part of our daily uniform and one that is unlikely to go away any time soon.
This has cultivated a new strain of fetish, it seems: used face masks, especially those worn by attractive women.
As ...
After losing his wife, the former TV announcer Mao Kobayashi, to cancer in 2017, the top kabuki actor Ebizo Ichikawa was reinvented in the public imagination as a sympathetic figure bravely battling on as a single parent.
Ebizo, who had an image as a womanizer before he settled down with Mao Kobayashi, is apparently starting to date again. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but the tabloids are relishing the details: namely that the 44-year-old star is dating more than one woman, judging from paparazzi shots, and they are much younger than him. Though one such report came out last autumn, ...
We already know that young people and sexuality claims that they are becoming less interested in sex. A new book, though, attempts to get behind the sensational headlines and probe the real reasons and implications of this.
Drawing on data from the six-yearly surveys conducted by the Japanese Association for Sex Education since 1974 -- in particular, the most recent survey in 2017 -- the book notes that sexual experience among high schoolers and college students was active until 2005, when it peaked for both male and females with 26.2% male high school students having sexual experience, ...
It's common enough to read reports about male celebrities dating women a decade or more their junior. What about the ladies?
The actress Chiharu Niiyama is now 41. She married a famous baseball coach in 2004, gave birth to a daughter in 2006, and then divorced in 2014. Along with small acting roles, she has continued to maintain a public profile, most recently through social media.
Last year, to mark her fortieth birthday and twenty-fifth year as an actor, she did a swimsuit gravure shoot for the first time in two decades. The results were jaw-dropping, as we wrote at the time.
No doubt ...
Is it the miso, the seaweed, the tofu, or the fish? Theories abound, but one thing is certain: Japan is a nation with a high life expectancy. The average lifespan is 84 years, several years longer than Western nations.
Now a cardiovascular physiologist has cut through the rhetoric to propose that the secret to longevity is actually sex.
As described in an essay for aeon, Denis Noble looks at ancient Chinese poems and scrolls kept at the National Museum in Tokyo. The Ishinho set of 30 scrolls contain remedies that are exclusively herbal, nutritional, or sexual.
Noble begins speculating on ...
They say that everything is small in Japan. Small cars. Small homes. Small food portions. Small people. Only kidding about that last one.
Sometimes it seems that there really are capsule toys and model kits for everything.
In the latest evidence of this, renowned plastic model kit maker Hasegawa is set to release another miniature "retro vending machine" this July. And the fifth iteration (FA13) of the series of kits, following versions for ramen and udon noodles, is a porn vending machine.
It's not explicitly stated as such, but the weirdly anonymous-looking design and the conspicuous, ...
Here's a peculiar case.
As reported in Bengo4, a woman is suing her employer in Japan for enabling sexual harassment.
Her company failed to act after it was alleged the woman's section chief sent her around 150 pornographic images. They were sent to her at the company address over three occasions between January and April 2020, with the third batch alone containing 100 photos and an adult toy. The woman in her thirties is seeking ¥4.4 million in damages in the lawsuit that began at Tokyo District Court on March 30.
The man in his fifties sent them to her by private post anonymously. She ...
Skinship is big in Japan: a concept of bodily intimacy via contact through the skin, such as by sleeping on neighboring futon or, most obviously, bathing together.
So while your mom or bestie might not hug you as much, you will bathe with your immediate relatives, such as your kids, siblings, or partner, and it doesn't cease to be a thing even if you only have one of those square bathtubs hardly large enough to fit an average Westerner's body. People just sort of clamber in and sit on top of each other in the bath.
Of course, communal bathing culture extends to bathhouses and hot springs, ...
Tenga is, as regular readers will know, one of Japan's leading adult toy brands, and surely the one that has the most success overseas, helped by its very clean and universal design (a far cry from the kind of highly Japanese style of hentai illustrations you find on box art on releases by Tama Toys, Toy's Heart, and so on).
A Tenga-related topic we often like to discuss here on this blog are the various marketing campaigns that the company does, such as the rocket it launched into space or its hat for dispensing tissues.
In addition, Tenga also does serious research related to sex and ...
She teased. The mainstream media lapped it up. She delivered. Now the publisher is looking to see the impact on the sales figures.
The former top fashion model Yukina Kinoshita has attempted her comeback with a page straight out of Angelica Michibata's book: when in doubt, take off your clothes.
As we continue to revel in a wave of nostalgia with recent gravure comebacks by the likes of Shizuka Nakamura and Ai Shinozaki -- likewise, nude or semi-nude -- we were intrigued by this slightly different case, in which the model Kinoshita, after being dropped by her agency over the celebrity's ...
