Sexuality in Tokyo

The dream of bringing Eros back:

I was invited for dinner. We ate Sashimi, grilled fish, rice and salad. It was a very good dinner.

The couple turned their home into an erotic palace with many naked full sizes mannequins, objects and books.

Both dream of bringing Eros back to Japan.

By walking in public demonstrations and creating art, the couple depicted above wants to bring their interest to others.

While it feels a bit strange to report about "sexuality in Japan", as I clearly am a cultural stranger to Japan, there were a couple of observations that I have been able to make in my everyday life:

◙ In the modern public education system, physical intimacy is an off-topic. Considering, sexual education is still taught to children with metaphors like bees and flowers.

◙ While fast changes happen in technologies and society are causing role conflicts in the rest of the "modern" world, the rigid definitions on women’s and men’s role in the society in Japan refrains from adjustments to modernity.

◙ In Japan, adult-films are always censored.

◙ For the rush hours, the subway has coaches reserved only for women, because of perverts touching them. All around the city, advertisements offer services for cuddling & talking to schoolgirls or diaper changing while acting as infants for men. BDSM whipping and tight ropes are on supply, as well. What is called Pedophilia in the West is called Lolita-fetish in Japan.

The Japanese society appears to be dealing surprisingly honest with this obviously abnormal sexual behaviors. An exception that this extreme isn’t frowned up by society?

◙ Sexualized female depictions can be found everywhere in Tokyo. Printed on the windows of Pachinko and gaming centers, on magazines in the convenience stores, in advertisements, and they are also an inherent part of Anime and Manga. In the Japanese pop art of animated humanized objects and living things the transition from cuteness – there is clearly an obsession for cuteness in Japan – to erotic connotations does not make a stop for animals, children and robotic humans: childlike with overly big eyes, boobs and butt (women) and tallness and muscles (men).

◙ Officially, prostitution is prohibited in Japan.

A biologically dysfunctional sexual behavior seems to have evolved: Japan’s population number is declining.

◙ Is a partnership inappropriate in general? That’s what herbivore men would agree with – young (heterosexual) men who renounce from sexual contact to women is a trend perceived by Tokyo’s gender studies of the 21st century. Most research in this field has been carried out by male scholars. Whether similar trends are followed by some groups of the female gender, seems to remain not interesting in Japanese academia (and of course for international media).
Kabukichō proofs, that there is also the other way round. Here in Kabukichō the side walks are filled with male hosts whose services as a professional evening company (from friend to prostitute) are sought out by women, only.

◙ Statistics claim to record world’s highest rate of homosexuality among young men in Japan. For 2018 a study about sexual minorities in Japan conducted that 8.9 % of the respondents defined themselves as LGBTQ+ (1).

What would these observations mean for the country's future? How does the human specie define itself within this and out of this complicated situation? How is this situation handled by politics, economy and society? How could a positive turn look like, or is this the end of a culture?