Like most places, older politicians in Japan are no strangers to sex scandals: from gay prostitutes to forcing young sportsmen to kiss them or even putting bondage club visits on the expense books.
And it's not just the politicos. The bureaucrats are at it too.
In 1998 seven senior civil servants in the Ministry of Finance were arrested and charged with corruption. They had received favors from figures in the finance world, such as trips to a "no-panties shabu shabu" establishment in Tokyo's Kabukicho.
Japan's anti-prostitution laws -- paying for penetration is officially illegal ...
Here's some vintage coverage of United States servicemen enjoying nascent Japanese-style Turkish baths (toruko-buro, the old name for what became soapland).
"The Turkish Bath has come to Tokyo with a difference," it proclaims. "Real Hot Turkish Bath". Hmm, quite.
The source is apparently a June 1958 issue of adult magazine People Today. The original scans are viewable here.
The magazine article appears to cover the new modern steam baths appearing in Tokyo in the postwar period, possibly during the occupation years before prostitution was illegalized.
This is all very ...
Some generous soul has unearthed a copy of an old Japanese sex guide for youngsters. And what a find it is.
The first thing to note about The Young Person’s Guide to Sex is the hairy armpit on the cover. Different times, different attitudes, folks.
Dating back to the 1960s, young people could read this handy guide to learn such important things as how to hold hands with your partner.
Apparently such activities as shining your man's shoe or combing your lady's hair were also part of the courtship ritual back then.
And then there was the nose-touching and chin-stroking.
The ...
The opening of Japan's first major public exhibition of shunga erotic prints is quite a landmark event. We finally got to go recently.
We went on a Saturday and the line to get in stretched out of the venue. They were there in their hordes: men, women, couples, foreign tourists (European, American and Asian).
Lining up, some were excited, some seemed curious -- while others appeared intellectual and austere. Inside, however, everything changed. All the faces displayed the same awe and amazement; couples exchanged looks and words ("Wow, so big"). Couples gripped each other just that little ...
Yes, finally! Japan is getting its first ever shunga exhibition, opening in Tokyo this September.
While legally you can't show genitalia in films, porn or even art (as Megumi Igarashi has found out to her misfortune), Japan has an immensely rich history of sexually explicit art and erotica.
The important thing to remember about shunga (literally "spring paintings") is that they were created by some of the most famous and popular woodblock print artists, including Hokusai and Utamaro. Sure, they were more niche than the most iconic prints -- but they were still part of the ...
Joining the recent silliness of Condom Day in the (ever-increasing) list of odd anniversaries in Japan, "Kiss Day" is celebrated on May 23rd because it is the day that the film Hatachi no seishun (20-Year-Old Youth) was released in 1946.
In case you're not a film buff, that's the movie that featured the first ever kiss scene, though the stars may have had gauze between them.
To celebrate, Edition Aoyama, a club in Akasaka, Tokyo, is holding an event on Saturday where couples (not necessarily male-female, it seems) are invited to kiss each other through an acrylic plastic ...
It is said that half of all sex in Japan happens in a love hotel. 1% of the population uses a love hotel on any single day; something like 1,370,000 couples. A large proportion of the nation's new babies are conceived in a love hotel. There are 500 million visits a year. Room occupancy is 600-700% in some busy establishments -- 78.8 stays per room per month!
The love hotel industry has an annual turnover of ¥4 trillion yen, which is around four times the operating profits of Toyota and double the anime industry. And yet it's cars and anime that the government wants to push as the face ...
Hihokan (literally "secret treasure hall") are Japan's sex museums, a wealth of postwar kitsch that fester around the country.
Now Atami Hihokan, one of the most famous of them all, has apparently achieved the dubious honor of being the last remaining sex museum. Like a lot of regional facilities in Japan, the effects of a changing economy, cheaper overseas travel and depopulation have meant that the countryside is full of rotting and rusting theme parks and museums. The Hihokan have sadly not escaped this fate.
Image of Beppu Hihokan via Hakkaku Culture
The Hihokan (sometimes spelt ...
When we think of Japanese virginal girls, we tend to think of cute girls like this.
But there were another kind.
The Ojiroku and Obasa was a rural custom that is said to have continued until the twentieth century.
They weren't allowed contact with anyone except the oldest son and could not marry, instead being worked by the family like a slave all their lives.
Due to Japan's mountains, there are many villages separated by peaks and forests, giving rise to unique isolated culture. Take the village of Kamihara in Nagano.
In this village, there was no space for children other ...
Megumi, Kazuki, Tadashi and I like to scour the streets looking for new adventures in Tokyo. But we also make time to read. Obviously, with the amount of crime and dirty antics we report on in this blog, we need to keep a close eye on the weekly tabloids.
But we also like to read serious books. One I've been perusing recently is The Inland Sea (1971) by the late, great Donald Richie.
Richie was a famous Japan observer, a writer based her from just after the war and who did a lot to promote Japanese cinema in particular.
In the early 1960's he took a long trip around the Seto Inland ...
