Why Japan Has so Much Porn

In case you didn't know, Japan has lots of porn. An unholy amount, in fact, probably more than any country in Asia or Europe. Where else in the world can you find porn flicks next to Disney classics? (Well, on American porn sites, you can see Disney characters in porn flicks, but that's a whole other story). Here are musings by a guy who's studied in Japan on why Japan has so much porn:

Unmarried men in Japan don't have enough sex.

I'm talking about the schoolboys who grow up unaccustomed to talking to girls, the overachievers who have been driven by their parents to focus on nothing but school and career, and the otaku who frequent Akihabara, Tokyo's Electric Town, on a daily basis (in America, we call them geeks and nerds). The schoolboys and the overachievers basically fall under the same broad category. Excluding the ones who attend single-gender schools, both have the opportunity to meet girls at school, but the former group doesn't know how and the latter group has no time for it. They naturally still lust and wonder about girls. They need to have their outlet.

The otaku are the worst. They prefer digitized and animated women to real women. Some videogames, which are only sold in Japan, feature female digital models that pose and strip as the (almost always) male player wills it. This is only the softcore stuff. I won't go into the more adult games. These men would rather read pornographic comics and watch hentai (Japanese animated porn) than speak to real women. Sure, the likes of Lara Croft, Chun Li, the girls of Dead or Alive, and Blood Rayne are more anatomically perfectly developed than any real women could realistically ever hope to be, but they. Are. Not. Real.

Married couples don't have enough sex.

It is said that in Japan men marry twice, once to their wives, once to their jobs. So chances are, Japanese women are marrying married men. You might ask why women just don't avoid that predicament, find men who aren't married to their jobs. But most Japanese women look for men who match the sanko ("three highs": high salary, high height, and high education). If you've got a lucrative job, then it's most likely one that requires you to be away from home - and your wife - most of the time.

Many married couples do not spend enough time together, the wife sleeping in a cold bed, the husband staying at the workplace to complete his duties. Sometimes, men rent apartments closer to their companies so they can get more sleep, going home (which can be a two-and-a-half-hour train ride, during which the men might read pornographic comics if they're not sleeping) only on weekends, if not only every month. Moreover, most porn actresses (called AV - adult video - idols in Japan) are more attractive to men than their own wives are. Where do you think porn comes into all this?

Single girls try to have sex too much.

Have you seen Babel, the spiritual sequel to 21 Grams starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett? You know the deaf-mute Japanese girl whose sexual advances get rejected by the men she approaches? Well, she's not a completely fictionalized character. A number of Japanese girls crave intimacy. They don't get enough of it at home because their parents are trained to suppress emotions. They don't get enough of it from the boys at school because the boys are either too stupid or too busy. You might think they would experience intimacy from their girlfriends, but if you think America has issues with cliques, then you don't even want to imagine the uchi-to-soto (in-group/out-group) cultural phenomenon in Japan, especially among junior high and high school girls.

Sometimes, the only people they get intimacy from are the men and boys who use them for sex. Arcade toilet stalls, sticky photo booths, love hotels, and parks are not uncommon settings for intercourse. This sometimes leads to early careers as porn actresses (although you can hardly call what they do "acting"). It's a chance to earn some extra cash, and men are finally pay attention to them, so why not?

Japanese men are too creative for their own (women's) good.

The Japanese are world-renowned for their gadgets. I do not need to explain this. I went to a sex shop once in the Shibuya district of Tokyo to look for a present for a female friend (you don't have to believe that last part if you don't want to, but it's true). Shibuya is like Japan's Las Vegas Strip. It was an interesting experience. Boys and their toys have always had a special relationship. When the boys grow into men, they have got to put their toys to practical use, right?

Like their ancestors, modern Japanese women are maltreated.

OLs (office ladies) are commonly expected to perform menial tasks such as pouring tea/coffee and cleaning up after their male co-workers. Even getting promoted is harder. This happens at all sorts of workplaces, including schools. If there's more than one female employee for a task that only requires one set of hands, then the youngest takes it. This corporate inequality has led to outsourcing of Japan's female workers. The lucky ones land careers with foreign companies. Others land on computer screens in foreign nations.

Bottom line

Like all business products, Japanese porn, whether live action or animated, exists in such abundance because there is such a demand for it. I'm not going to try to answer whether that's a bad thing.