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 ...
As the Heisei period enters its final months, what better time to look back to... the Showa days!
Clearly there is still something alluring about the 1970s and 1980s, given the way idol Yumi Asahina's recent photo book brilliantly imitated their vintage charms, and the references to these older style of shoots made by Iori and Rukino.
We wanted to take a trip back in time and pick out five examples of Japanese ladies who hit it big back in the 1970s and 1980s. (This isn't actually our first stab at doing this of list. For other examples, check out the selection we made back in ...
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 ...
Newbie gravure idol Yumi Asahina (朝比奈祐未) quickly made an impression on us a few months ago with her awesome butt -- so much so that we included her in our updated list of top asses in Japan.
Now she's gone one step further with a new photo book release that sees her strip off, not only revealing her gorgeous butt but even her bush and breasts. Praise the 8 million gods of Shinto! She's joined the long tradition of the "hair nude" full-frontal photo shoot.
The 26-year-old G-cup gravure idol was shot by Kendrick Watanabe for a retro-tinged photo book called Asahina Gaho (Asahina ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
It's time to take another trip down the rabbit hole of vintage Japanese porn, back to the Summer of Love and more.
Today we indulge in some fantastically retro images of nude Japanese models (unfortunately censored) showing us their curvy bodies in the vibrant surroundings of what look like love hotels.
The source tells us the date is some point between 1965 and 1975 -- very far from an "innocent" time.
We could spend all day looking at these kinds of images, just like we would happily lust over the exotic charms of Sayoko Yamaguchi rather than the cutesy smiles of AKB48's ...
Decades pass. Fashions and fads come and go. But one thing remains the same: strippers are hot.
These ladies from the 1940s and 1950s certainly knew how to entertain male audiences back in the days of prewar Japan, including, no doubt, more than their fair share of American GIs. We can imagine Donald Richie watching and admiring them, perhaps with a whiskey or two in hand.
In our more "enlightened" and morally "free" times, the girls from AKB48 keep their clothes on, pubic hair is pixellated, and pop stars aren't allowed to have boyfriends. And heaven help you if you're caught ...
