The photographer Beniko has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a follow-up photo book to her 2023 publication about Japan's disappearing old red-light districts (yukaku, akasen).
Beniko is herself a former sex worker at a soapland in Yoshiwara, the famous red-light district in east Tokyo that was a booming licensed pleasure quarter during the Edo period. A single mother in her early fifties, she taught herself to use a camera from the age of 48.
She has given guided tours of Yoshiwara and taken portraits of porn stars, strippers, and Yoshiwara soaplands.
Her photography project has ...
For almost as long as we have been involved with the adult industry in Japan, since the late 2000s, two big names have always dominated: Tenga, revered for its innovation and sophistication with masturbation toys; and Orient Industry, which has almost single-handedly made Japanese sex dolls internationally famous.
The maker of customized, premium silicone sex dolls has become legendary, its hyper-realistic products have featured in books and documentaries, and are admired by all. If you have never seen an Orient Industry doll in person, be assured that photos don't do them justice.
This ...
We love taking a trip not so much down memory lane as Japanese sex history lane, back to the early days of hair nudes (full-frontal shoots) and classic porn from the Showa era.
We previously took a nostalgic look at Japanese gravure idols from the 1970s and '80s that included the comely Nami Asada (麻田奈美).
Nami Asada made a real stir in the 1970s with her nude photo shoots that showcased her stunning F-cup breasts to the full.
The "apple nudes," where she used an apple prop to cover her most intimate parts, first appeared in 1973 in several issues of Heibon Punch magazine. They were ...
Have you ever wondered what that sex position is called in Japanese?
This could be for purely academic reasons, of course, if you are a bit of a linguist. Maybe you just like having random knowledge in your arsenal.
Or it could be for that time when you need to explain to your Japanese partner the position you want to try next.
This superbly useful guide has illustrations of various sex positions with their Japanese name, including transliterated versions if you can't read the kanji.
The guide was created by illustrator Jikumaru and published online in 2019, giving kind permission for ...
We've said it before and we'll say it again: we think shunga, erotic woodblock prints, are one of the most impressive and significant parts of Japanese historical culture, and that the government should be singing its praises from the rooftops, instead of trying to hide them and keep people from seeing them under threat of prosecution.
Fortunately, we are no longer alone. Shunga has achieved global success, not least in the form of a very successful art exhibition in Britain in 2013, which belatedly came to Japan in 2015 and attracted huge crowds.
Money talks. Organizers now can point to ...
Have you always wanted to own a love hotel?
Now you can! And for just ¥88 million (a bit less than an average newly built condo in Tokyo costs).
The two-floor hotel, which is located a short distance from the beach and an hour's walk from Atami Station, is currently for sale.
The building is 728.65 square meters (the land is a bit bigger, at 999.46 square meters), and was built in 1985, which would make it positively ancient in Tokyo but not too shabby in a regional place like Atami.
Best of all, it is designed like a castle (perhaps in a Middle Eastern or Mediterranean ...
Before we had streaming and downloadable formats, we had Blu-ray and DVD. And before that, back in some period lost to the mists of time -- namely, the 1980s and 1990s -- we have VHS video tapes.
The arrival of VHS marked the full birth of the Japanese adult video industry, hence the name.
The new format had incredible commercial potential for widespread distribution of content and meant hardcore porn was no longer a niche but an easily accessible, widely consumed form of porn (as opposed to the simulated sex in "pink" sexploitation, whose decline was hastened by AV).
VHS was the heyday of ...
We've written before about Yunana, the young female fan of postwar Showa-era love hotels who posts photos of her outings (alone) to these bygone dens of romance and sex.
It seems Yunana's following has continued to grow, since she has just released a book showcasing her work.
The book's title, In Search of the Revolving Bed, is a reference to perhaps the most famous love hotel room gimmick that is actually quite a rarity (it became illegal to install new ones after the law changed in 1985).
Now aged 26, the love hotel enthusiast was recently interviewed by Bunshun about her activities, ...
The fertility/harvest festival held annually at Tagata Shrine in Komaki, Aichi, isn't as famous as the Kanamara festival, held near Tokyo, but is another example of an ancient Shinto event in which phallic objects abound.
Like with Kanamara, the Tagata Shrine honen festival makes for some very photogenic moments where a giant phallus newly carved from cypress is paraded around on March 15. This is led by the Shinto shrine's priests in all their finery. Women in robes also walk around holding smaller phallus objects.
Festivals are also about making money for the shrine, and Tagata Shrine, ...
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 ...
