Yoshiwara was the main red-light district (yukaku) in Edo, the old name for Tokyo. Its legacy continues to resonate today: the area remains full of soaplands and prostitutes, and other parts of the east of the city, such as Ueno, Nippori and Akihabara, are also centers of cheap sex.
That being said, Yoshiwara is gentrifying to a certain extent -- and here's an interesting example, first reported on Spoon Tamago.
But for designer Yayoi Okano, Yoshiwara was more than just a neighborhood known for its sex trade. It was home.
Okano grew up in Yoshiwara where, despite its ...
Back when Mariya Nagao was one of the members of AKB48, we already took something of a liking to her.
But it is since leaving the (faltering) group that she has shined, stripping off to reveal her perfect bikini butt and body.
As we have discussed before, Japanese TV is a tame entity, though livened up by the occasional scene of Nanao in lingerie.
Nagao was recently gracing Japanese television screens to show us what it is like to kiss her in a swimming pool. Naturally, Nagao was wearing slinky swimwear.
The 22-year-old was kissed by Popteen model Koji Konishi on the aptly named ...
Remember Yasumasa Yonehara? Super big a few years ago, he's the instantly recognisable bald Japanese photographer with that habit of taking slutty pictures of slutty girls in hotel rooms. What a guy.
Yes, he's one of those people who just proves that if you are cocky enough and say you are a photographer, you can apparently get almost any woman to pose for you.
Perhaps that's why half the male foreigners we seem to meet in Japan claim to be photographers (the other half claim to be DJs).
Yonehara has now turned his attention to swimwear. After all, it is summer.
We have no ...
A woman who fell asleep on a train woke up to find herself abducted and trapped in the home of a man she did not know.
The 28-year-old company employee from Adachi ward in east Tokyo was allegedly confined between June 4th and June 5th after she fell asleep on a train.
The suspect is 33-year-old Yoshifumi Kurita, a temp from Sagamihara, who was arrested by Kanagawa police on June 18th.
According to police, Kurita is maintaining silence, though there have been five similar cases in the area around where there crime took place.
The victim had been out drinking and was riding on a JR ...
Ahead of the release in July of her new photo book, a preview image of Minami Minegishi has come out showing the slinky idol doing the classic semi-nude "hand bra" (tebura) pose.
While pretty tame considering what some AKB48 graduates get up to, this kind of photo shoot has become something of a rite of passage for AKB48 idols.
Haruna Kojima did it, covering her gorgeous pale flesh with her tiny hands. Likewise, Atsuko Maeda has done a tebura and so did Yuko Oshima in a Mika Ninagawa shoot.
Most notoriously, Tomomi Kasai's tebura was so controversial it led Kodansha to cancel ...
As we know, virtual reality is big right now and that includes for the adult market.
This isn't from the recent Adult VR Festa but the geeks and tech event, Niconico Chokaigi 2016, held in April, but we were saving it until now.
Strictly speaking, we think this was developed for people who work in the care industry to experience what it is like to be incontinent, but there are also adult: this is a DIY virtual omorashi device!
No longer is your only option getting some rubber diapers. Instead, now you can feel like you are peeing yourself just by wearing some wires and sitting on ...
Ami Tomite becomes the latest former AKB48 idol to strip off and show us her nude body.
Granted, the pictures are "censored" for weekly tabloid publication but these are essentially verging on hair nude territory.
Tomite joined AKB48 in 2009 but left while still a "research student" to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Since then she has become a minor gravure idol, though now can capitalize on the notoriety of being yet another ex-AKB girl who has stripped off.
Other than briefly joining another music group, Ami's career has mostly been playing bit ...
The recent interest in Japanese AV performers' labor and human rights continues to develop. It's one of the big stories of the year so far.
Following the arrest mere days ago of a porn performer agency for forcing its roster of women to appear in porn and other recent developments like a damning report and seminar on the issue of exploitation and trafficking, now comes news that former AV star Mariko Kawana has launched a new orgnization to help.
There are already groups like Lighthouse: Center for Human Trafficking Victims (formerly Polaris Project Japan) and Human Rights Now (HRN) as ...
The AV industry in Japan is not all take, take, take. It likes to give back, too.
The "boob aid" annual event is one of the best examples of this, in which porn stars let their breasts be groped by ordinary members of the public in order to raise money for AIDS charities.
Now Soft on Demand and Japanese porn stars have come together (no pun) to help save the planet.
The Do Eco website looks like a porn video streaming site, but don't be fooled. While it's not fully safe for work, there's no sex or nudity. And it's all for a good cause.
It features nine AV performers, including ...
Tokyo Kinky was there on Sunday, loyally lining up in Akihabara for what had been touted as Japan's first ever adult virtual reality event. But all was in vain.
We had our suspicions about the event, given how shoddy the event's website was. Still, word had obvious got out -- that and how virtual reality is one of the big trends of the year and there had been promises of its adult implications for years.
There were hundreds of people trying to make it into a tiny venue in Akiba. We were all lining up patiently outside but the police eventually had to come and help control the size of ...
