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Mimishu1995's avatar

[Probably NSFW] Why does Japan produce so much porn?

Asked by Mimishu1995 (23800points) November 14th, 2013

I mean, Japan is an Asian country after all. And we Asian famously don’t take kindly to sex. As far as I know the only Asian country which doesn’t seem to have any bias against sex is India. So why is a country like Japan so into porn like that?

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39 Answers

whitenoise's avatar

For a continent that doesn’t take kindly to sex, it seems pretty densely populated.

I don’t really recognize your statement. In Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, the sex industry is very vividly alive. Just to name some examples.
Having a massage in Hong Kong in any parlor offers an interesting surprise 99% of the times.

jerv's avatar

@whitenoise Not as interesting as some of the surprises in Thailand.

Hard to say for certain, but Japan is it’s own country and culture. Also, they’re an island, cut off from Mainland Asia, so it’s inevitable that that isolation led to quite different development than their contiguous counterparts on the continent.

Smitha's avatar

It is mainly because there is high volume of porn viewing in Japan. Producing porn is a business over there and it generates lot of money. The hentai cartoons are mainly targeted at male high school and university students, they have more spare time than men who are employed. Moreover Japanese men are basically shy people and may be they are more comfortable with pornography than with real women.

Mimishu1995's avatar

@whitenoise I’m sorry that I didn’t add some more details:
Japan even has their own porn genre (Hentai), dating back to a very long time. It means that they don’t simply produce porn just to mimic what the other countries do.
Beside, I often find sexual implication in many non-sexual Japanese products. Take a screenshot of the game Corpse Party (notice how the girl’s panties is partially revealed) for example. Furthermore, if you are familiar with visual novels you can easily see that more than a half of the visual novels made in Japan have at least one sex scene.

livelaughlove21's avatar

I don’t understand why you say Asian people don’t “take kindly to sex.” Says who?

Mimishu1995's avatar

@livelaughlove21 For example my parents. They never allow me to say anything about sex and they don’t either (I have to find out myself using the net :) Nobody in my country talk openly about sex, and sex is the least thing in my friends’ mind when we chat to each other.

sinscriven's avatar

India is not a good example to use of a sexually liberal country, their taboos are so strong that even kissing on camera causes an extreme media scandal. I can’t remember who it was but it was either Richard Gere or Harrison Ford that has a standing warrant out for their arrest because they gave an actress a small peck.

It could be the product of Japan being a very reserved and restrained society where things are always assumed and never spoken and face is everything. Also an issue is that Japan has a serious population crisis problem. Old people are dying off, and younger people are not breeding. Reasons range from seeing relationships as too much of a hassle to deal with, to poor socialization, to society providing alternatives to actual realtionships; Dating simulator games, rentable cuddle buddies, You can pay $80 to have lie in bed staring into a girl’s eyes, and she’ll clean your ears for you and snuggle. and of course porn.

ragingloli's avatar

They are still human, and as such they have sexual urges. It is inevitable.
But due to their culture, they can not openly live it out, so they have pressure building up inside.
The release for that is, of course, porn.
And they are not alone in that.
Gay porn is big in Saudi Arabia.
And gay porn, teen porn and ebony porn are popular in the colonial south.

whitenoise's avatar

@ragingloli
Gay porn is big in Saudi?

That is probably one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve ever read…

whitenoise's avatar

@jerv

What with that surprise in Thailand? (the lady not being a lady shouldn’t surprise you…)

livelaughlove21's avatar

@Mimishu1995 They may not talk about it, but they think about it plenty – just like pretty much every other human being.

Seek's avatar

1. 90% of the Asian porn I’ve seen is quite “unkind”. It’s downright disturbing. I’ve started racially profiling porn against Asian. BDSM good, object rape bad. If the people don’t look like they’re enjoying their pain, I’m not interested.

2. For as graphically violent as Japanese porn is, they pixellate the genitals. There’s your conservative Asian view on porn. Tie the chick up and electrocute her labia, sure, but you better blur out the pink parts.

I wonder if American porn is a popular search in Asia, like Asian is here in America. Maybe they’re just hoping for some fun porn instead of all the unsatisfying meanness.

Seek's avatar

@sinscriven I would cuddle the hell out of someone for money. Somehow I’ve missed my calling.

livelaughlove21's avatar

@sinscriven Clean your ears?

@Seek_Kolinahr Agreed. Asian porn is creepy.

OneBadApple's avatar

Sweden gave us Bjorn
Iowa grows the corn
And Japan provides good porn

That’s just the way it is…..

ucme's avatar

Because it’s the land of the rising penis?

syz's avatar

The completely biased and (as far as I know) unsupported impression that I have of the Japanese is of being rather Victorian in their sexual attitudes. I tend to think of someone outwardly rigid and puritanical (i.e., repressed), and privately kinky.

(I’ve never been to Japan and I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone from Japan, so I don’t know how I would’ve formed that impression – but there you go.)

Pandora's avatar

I think the culture is way to complex to find any one reason. Things may have changed since I was in Japan, 15 years ago but I can tell you what I have noticed.
There are several different things going on.
1.They find it fashion forward to adopt European ideas and styles. Porn and the sex trade is very big in some European countries.

2. Japan use to have Geisha girls for many years before porn. It was an accepted practice that rich hard working men, had Geisha girls for sex and the wife for heirs.

3. Although Japan has educated their women, there is still a strong bias and resentment towards working women. The old boys club is still very strong. That could be some of the reason for the violent porn they have.

4. If it makes money and sells. Then they are going for it. Japanese porn isn’t only made for the Japanese. If anything, their men find European Blonds exotic and Japanese females dull, while there is great interests from Europeans and Americans, over Japanese women. And the same can be said for the women. They find other cultures fascinating.

5. From what I understand. Their is also a new culture being born, where Japanese men and women do not want to marry or engage in sex. They are working hard to simply survive and find that relationships get in the way of, the little time they have, to have fun. Housing is over crowded, the work force is overcrowded, and property is expensive. They are either prolonging getting married and having children, or just not interested in ever getting married. My guess it that, it will make for a lot of sexually frustrated guys and porn is the short term answer.

OneBadApple's avatar

That’s all well and good. But Japanese porn is the only place I’ve seen where the “actors” crap on each others’ faces.

If I am being naive here, and that sort of thing is commonly done in the porn world by all nationalities, please correct me as soon as possible….

Seek's avatar

^ Not common, but it’s there. You just generally won’t find it unless you’re looking for it.

For the record, no, I’m not into scat. Ew.

OneBadApple's avatar

So it’s common enough that there is a word for it. Scat.

That would be depressing if it weren’t so damn funny….

janbb's avatar

@OneBadApple “Scat” just means animal poop, it’s not a genre.

I think there are several reasons for it. There is a long tradition of erotic art in Japan; you can find many classical prints of it. Sometimes the most ostensibly repressive societies such as Victorian England have an underbelly of porn and prostitution. People have to go somewhere for sexual titillation and satisfaction and the more underground it is, the more money can be made from it.

OneBadApple's avatar

(writes that down….)

Seek's avatar

^ The Memoirs of Fanny Hill

Victorian smut novel.

OneBadApple's avatar

I thought Fannie Hill was on ‘The Match Game’, and wrote ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’

janbb's avatar

@OneBadApple That’s Fannie Flagg.

(We librarians usually get paid for all this information!)

OneBadApple's avatar

Ohhhhh yeahhhh…..

Thank you. Please put it on my tab….

Coloma's avatar

Don’t ask me, I’m not porn curious, if you’ve seen one porn film you’ve pretty much seen them all and I don’t go for gross and hardcore kinky. I’ve never seen Japanese porn and I’m okay with that.
However, I will say I got a big surprise a few nights ago, googling something and a pic of this black man with about a 2 foot dick giving hmsel ffellatio. Now THAT was an eye opener! lol 0-o

OneBadApple's avatar

Gee, thanks Coloma. Who knows how long it will be before I can un-see that imaginary vision…

gorillapaws's avatar

It’s not just their porn. Check out their game shows. I agree this is related to cultural repression and needing an outlet.

Coloma's avatar

@OneBadApple Yeah, I am still trying to erase that image, jeez…it was pretty shocking. lol

glacial's avatar

As others have said, repression invariably leads to creative porn.

pleiades's avatar

Just want to speak on behalf of Asians as a halfy myself.

“we Asian famously don’t take kindly to sex.”

What the heck does this mean?! China is the most populated country on earth. Lots of sex there for sure. India, also heavily populated, lots of sex there. It’s just like any other race I feel. I’d say 99% people like sex!

Now to answer your OP. Japanese culture is one of “traditionalism” yet “futurism” I think the futurism exploded in the 80s as they became a power horse in the technological global market and have pretty much adopted that as their way of life.

Going to go with the heavily dense population and regression as a claim to the boom in porn in Japan. Aka Nippon!

SecondHandStoke's avatar

So many porn genre virgins here. Cute.

Japan’s society can be a very lonely one. Crushing responsibility and the expectation of a restrained veneer leads to the need for acute relief.

The result is a beautifully compartmentalized culture.

Japan’s, well Asia’s, pornography is wonderfully tailored to taste and seems to leave nothing unexplored.

For me the greatest of it is explicitly psychological.

Need that exact part of your brain pricked? Their porn delivers.

No matter how savage and primal the content might be it still assumes some intelligence on the part of the viewer.

Japan in this department is a wonderful realm of contradictions:

Graphical representations of coitus pixeled out while limbless sex dolls hang from the ceilings of stores…

kritiper's avatar

Sales. And pubic hair. It is in bad taste to show pubic hair in Japanese adult film features.

SecondHandStoke's avatar

Japanese pubic hair.

It’s like wires to the nose.

LornaLove's avatar

It is probably a money issue. Supply and demand.

Coloma's avatar

@SecondHandStoke That’s disgusting!

SecondHandStoke's avatar

^Yet I cannot exactly be blamed, can I?

The closer you’re shaved the better experience you can expect.

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