“Hentai is brilliant”: British game show contestant wins round with Japanese sexual concept
July 10, 2019
/ Tadashi Anahori
Popular, long-running British game show Countdown has attracted an unusual flurry of headlines and online responses by allowing a "pornographic" concept to win a round.
In the long-running TV show, contestants try to find the longest words from a random selection of letters within 30 seconds.
On Monday's episode, Marwan Riach managed to find "hentai" and beat out his opponent's "patty."
The resident judge in the "Dictionary Corner" confirmed the validity of Riach's somewhat sheepishly offered word: "Hentai is brilliant," she said in a widely shared clip.
Well, quite.
With its customary ...
In late 1960s, Japanese girls spent the rainy season wet and semi-nude
June 12, 2019
/ Tadashi Anahori
It's rainy season here in Tokyo, which means heavy showers almost every day. What better excuse to stay indoors watching AV, testing out adult toys, and searching for Tokyo Kinky stories?
Doing just that, we came across this great vintage image of a late 1960s model showing off not only some great wear for the rainy season but also her cute nipples. Fashionable tits indeed.
Underneath her white shirt she is clearly sans bra and her great breasts are poking through the fabric. Now if only there were ladies actually like this on the streets of Tokyo, we would certainly venture out not ...
Revisiting the wonders of vintage Showa-era Japanese porn magazines
May 1, 2019
/ Tadashi Anahori
It's May 1st, the inaugural day of the new Reiwa era. And what better time to take a gander at some old porn from this cache of images recently shared online?
Strictly speaking, we reckon these adult magazines come from the Showa period, which ended in 1989, rather than the past three decades of Heisei, but there might be some overlap. Online searches seem to reveal nothing, so they are probably quite obscure.
We just love the titles: from "Visual Communication Magazine for Young Adalt" (sic) and "Fucky-up" (sic) to "Rape me" and "Sexual Les Girls." The shoots themselves range from the ...
Chronicling the decline of the porn magazine vending machine in Japan
April 26, 2019
/ Tadashi Anahori
We stumbled upon this great Twitter feed detailing a report by Shinbunka, the publishing industry trade journal in Japan, about the decline of the much-loved porn magazine vending machine. It also cites from an interview with the photographer Tetsuya Kurosawa, who has documented the vending machines (visiting some 500 locations along the way!).
It's true, we haven't seen one for many a moon. Here's why.
At the peak of the adult vending machine boom, there were some 50,000 machines nationwide in the 1970s. That lofty number has been reduced to a mere fraction now.
What are left are often ...
The wonderful Mulboyne, a boundless source of so much trivia and fascinating information about Japan, has posted a few images from past streaking incidents in Japan.
We wanted to share these with our readers, along with some further commentary.
Japan is a culture of pubic bathing, so public nudity is hardly much to write home about. But streaking, where one runs naked through a public place, is different: it is done for attention or as a protest, and is pronounced like a foreign word in Japanese.
It was applied first, it seems, in the early 1970s to describe a rash of incidents ...
What was sex in Japan like in 1991? A vintage porn magazine reveals
December 14, 2018
/ Tadashi Anahori
What was sex in Japan like in 1991?
That's probably not a question you hear enough. But given that the Heisei period is about to end with the current emperor's abdication next spring, what better a time than to look back on what people imagined sex should have been like back in the early days of the era?
We stumbled upon some scans of a spread from the April 1991 issue of Deluxe Beppin, an adult magazine published in the 1980s and 1990s in Japan. We found them on the fascinating portal of vintage sexiness that is Deluxe Beppin Maniac.
The spread is an ambitious and impressive to ...
Recreating Showa-era Japanese gravure erotic photo shoots
September 11, 2018
/ Tadashi Anahori
Let's travel back again to Showa, a time in Japan we know had plenty of hot sex and kinky antics.
Two models, Iori (Iori Kedakai) and Rukino (Luchino Fujisaki), have recreated a Showa-period gravure erotic photo shoot.
It was for a photography exhibition called "Do you like sexy young ladies of Showa?" held at a gallery in Koenji in August, accompanying a release of a photo book.
From the clothes to the coloring of the photo print and background as well as the makeup and hair styles, this shoot is thoroughly Showa in its inspiration. We love ...
Stay at this atmospherically preserved former pleasure quarter inn
June 14, 2018
/ Tadashi Anahori
We all like to stay in fancy hotels sometimes (if not all the time).
But there's also something fun and kinky about an overnight stay at a love hotel. It's like the kitsch is telling you to really make the most of your time there with a partner (or two).
We recently spotted a write-up about the Ichiraku Ryokan, an inn in Hiroshima that was a former red-light district inn and then a love hotel. It was built in 1950. The old red-light districts were still allowed for a time in the early postwar period until laws were changed to ban prostitution (at least in its overt form).
The current ...
How to Sex: Vintage Japanese sex guide magazine unearthed
January 12, 2018
/ Tadashi Anahori
Being born at the tail end of the Showa era, we've always had a sense of nostalgia for those pre-digital days.
In addition to a soft spot for old pink films, we also love to browse retro erotica and vintage porn. In past posts we've looked at 1960s nude shoots and love hotels.
About a year ago, we posted something about a vintage sex guide from the 1960s.
Here's something similar: How to Sex, an old sex guide based on the shijuuhatte -- the "48 Ways" of having sex as developed from centuries-old sumo wrestling moves.
The 64-page, all-color magazine guide is undated but seems to be ...
School in wartime Japan conducted naked lessons
October 12, 2017
/ Tadashi Anahori
In 1940, the Empire of Japan was at war, but times were good at least at one school in the land.
At the Ichinose National School (市之瀬国民学校) in Niigata, students and teachers stripped off to engage in the task of education au naturel.
As documented in some extraordinary photographs, the classes were conducted with almost no clothes on. Female teachers were exempt, it seems, but not female students, who joined their male counterparts in wearing nothing above the waist for their classes.
These pictures were originally published in the weekly magazine Asahi Graph, and shared ...