Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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As a guy living in Japan, a few points I will make:
However weird Japan porn may appear to you, it's nevertheless prohibited by law from showing genitalia. I know a guy who did time working for an organization (low level yakuza) that distributed depixellated porn. (This was around 2000). That law is odd, but I assure you it holds. That you can type in "uncensored" online and find such available does not change the fact that most of it is, in fact, censored, particularly in shops, etc. and anything geared mainly to a Japanese market. (I am waiting to be proven wrong )
Organized crime generally has its hand in the porn industry. As it does in the massive sex trade here (that dodges the law which declares prostitution illegal in various creative ways.)
The massive sex trade is available and thrives because...people are having sex. Just not with procreation in mind, and not with their wives or husbands. I'd have said "men" are having sex but they're doing it with women, it's just that the women are getting paid. By said men.
There are probably many variables contributing to what you're calling "Japanese sexual mores." Whether porn is the strongest factor, a contributing factor, a result, or unrelated, is a study that would be difficult to design and as far as I know hasn't been made convincingly.
I wouldn't say at all that "Japan as a country is addicted to porn." Certainly no more than, say "America as a country." It's odd to read that actually. What makes you have that impression?
German porn, in my limited experience, is weirder than Japanese porn (though it's true you can find some pretty disturbing Japanese porn.) That's a rabbit hole that I've never really wanted to spelunk.
The point you make about the fertility issue is as far as I know accepted generally as accurate.
Edit: de-mosaic'd is probably the term I was looking for.
Re. 1 I think this actually contributes to the weirdness of said porn. If you can't show genitalia you have to get increasingly creative to titillate and shock.
Re. 2, is this really true? I'm not saying I doubt you, just that it's the sort of things that always seems to be brought up when the Japanese porn industry is mentioned but I have never seen/heard evidence for this. I don't doubt that organized crime could be part of some porn productions, but wouldn't a simpler explanation be that there is a large demand for porn actresses, it's a relatively easy way to quickly earn some money, and some subset of Japanese women simply don't have that many scruples around participating?
Re. 3, not wrong, but I'd almost deny that "sex" means the same thing here. You correctly point out that procreation is not the main goals. When people say "nobody is having sex" it typically means "nobody is having sex (and forming the emotional connections and relationships that typically precede and succeed said sex)." Visiting a prostitute and enjoying what is IMO essentially a more expensive form of masturbation. And spending a ton of money on an expensive masturbation habit rather than just trying to talk to girls and get in their pants seems pretty dysfunctional to me.
Re. 5, to play devil's advocate, compared to America, material that we would think of as "porn" or "adult" sure seems more available and ubiquitous here. There are adult establishments plainly visible in every Japanese city I've visited, most conbinis have a swimsuit/gravure magazine section right next to the kids' magazines, weekly manga magazines aimed at middle and high schoolers often have topless women in them, and the "adult" section in bookstores and DVD shops is often only demarcated by a flimsy noren curtain that obscures almost nothing (or better yet, just a line of tape on the ground that says 18禁止, lol). Is this an indicator that the average Japanese brain is more porn-soaked than the average American's? I can't say for sure but something seems to be going on.
Because I don't really like point-by-point replying (My own points were not one-to-one matching my interlocutor's) I'm going to throw out just a couple thoughts.
Porn in weekly magazines is marketed to men, as is the sexy manga. Kids' and teens' manga like Jump/ジャッンプ isn't without somewhat titillating pics, but there are no tits, depictions of la petit mort, etc.. That grown ass men read comics for porn is weird. No argument.
Organized crime yes definitely has its hand in porn. As much as I mourn that our planet has shit like Onlyfans, at least yes, the girls fucking dudes on pornhub linking to their OF accounts are probably freelancers the yaks can't touch (cough). Studio porn, you are either funded by or you are paying off the yaks. You can't even sell tchotchkes on Sanjo bridge without a visit from your friendly neighborhood chimpira, who are yak stooges waiting to move up in the ranks. Pay your fee and you're probably fine.
Are there porn freelancers selling DVDs? I bet no. I do not have the ability to speak with absolute certainty but I myself have no doubts. But who sells DVDs these days? I guess some do. Certainly the love hotel porn channels don't make their porn in-house. And sure, girls who have dubious scruples regarding porn must be legion. I think the main thing is the typical Japanese girl is more attractive and has a better body than her age mate in, say, America. I can't imagine it was always so, but hey I shall not fat shame. <-- Quote me and enjoy me.
As for what constitutes sex, I don't know, if your definition is "in love with each other" then probably not many Japanese past a certain age are having sex. I was rather conceptualizing sex as coitus, as dick in vagina with the requisite thrusting. I apologize for the crudity of this post but someone recently wrote on the Motte that they wanted more naughty words. So fuckin here they the fuck are.
Where were we? Is Japan porn-sodden? I won't necessarily say no. Maybe for me living here it's this is water, this is water, the sex is water, etc. It's not impossible. I just think there's lots of weird porn out there that's not Japanese as well.
It's a beautiful day in rural Kanto and I'm off work today and have had several Sakurao gin daisies, and so I regret to say that cannot write a coherent response worthy of your post.
But I will say that your points are well taken and I can't disagree with any of it... except that I swear I've seen tits in manga magazines marketed towards teenage boys. I know the more intentionally titillating stuff you're mentioning, and it wasn't that. But maybe I just mistook the market for the comic I was reading, I dunno.
There are tits (and some nudity in general) in manga aimed at children and teens, but it's not really sexual nudity. I'm thinking of Inuyasha and the Pokémon Pocket Monsters series for example.
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Manga like everything else is on tablets and phones these days. I remember the handful of times as a kid that I actually owned a comic book (they were banned as time wasting in my house). I would marvel at the art and could stare at a page for minutes at a time The way people flip so quickly through the panels these days really mystifies me. Especially the sex scenes, I mean I'm trying to be discreet looking over your shoulder, man, give me a second to focus my eyes.
Do you know what sites and apps people actually use for reading manga? I see a lot of stuff being half-digital now, where the first and latest few chapters are free online, with physical volume releases and paid subscriptions for archived chapters.
I still read almost everything pirated, but I'm trying to shift to full raw as my jp slowly improves/i get faster at looking up confusing kanji and slang.
Plus I'd like to at least support LO and a few other publishers after all these years of stealing their stuff.
I'm afraid I'm not the guy to ask, but I can ask around.
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They're the same picture, it's just that one takes longer and isn't 100% successful just by applying resources to the problem.
(Marriages can be this too, come to think of it; if the groom pays the bride's family, that makes it prostitution by definition with the father as the pimp. And that's also the traditionalist answer to the "having a daughter is the ultimate cuck" copypasta/one-sided observation.)
That's true for most major cities in countries where that is legal, a good chunk of YA fantasy is focused on blood, booze, and boobs, and Western kids just type "pornhub.com" in the browser (complete with 'line of tape on the ground that says 18+', which only stops the ones that wouldn't have a problem seeing this stuff anyway).
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