Japanese Pornography and JAV
Posted on July 12, 2009
Filed Under Japanese History |
Japanese pornography has some unique features which separate it from pornography in other countries, especially Western pornography. It is quite common and frequently translated and exported to Western cultures because of its large spectrum of themes and media.
The concept of “pornography” may have emerged in the Edo period when every form of popular culture flourished. All forms of pornography flourished, with the sole exception of figures and statues. This does not mean there were no earlier works of erotica; these early works were by highly literate nobles and were often considered works of art. Japanese mythology, later formulated into the system known as Shinto, makes multiple references to sexuality, but almost always in a positive manner.
In the Edo period, pornography flourished due to the unique characteristic of the city of Edo.[citation needed] In this period, men (who were the only consumers of pornographic material at that time) made up well over 60% of the population.[citation needed] These men came from all over Japan to work, and remained there for years before returning to their hometown to have a wife arranged for them, having learned valuable skills like reading, writing, and crafts[citation needed]. With a disproportionate amount of the population being male, state-controlled prostitution districts like Yoshiwara and pornography were needed[citation needed].
There were many pornographic materials. Shunga or pornographic wood-block pictures were printed with all imaginable situations. These often took the form of a book with sentences to describe verbal utterances of the partners, as well as to offer brief descriptions of a scene. Near the end of the Edo period when foreigners became widely known and seen, even interracial sex acts with foreign males were drawn and sold, not to mention acts with animals, demons (both male and female), and deities. The actual uses of shunga in the period are still debated, but probably resembled modern uses of pornographic materials, including masturbation and shared viewing with a lover. According to some accounts, called into doubt by recent scholarship, shunga were even packed by the parents of a wife for use in her marriage. Shunga could also be borrowed from a rental book shop. In 1808, there were 656 such shops in Edo, 300 shops in Osaka. This means that there was about one shop for every 1500 people in Edo. Non-pornographic materials were also available from these shops. These included woodblock pictures of celebrities like kabuki actors and geisha, clothed in kimono.
After the Meiji restoration in the second half of the 19th century, the publication of pornographic materials declined under government pressure, specifically the fear that such an openly sexual culture would be seen as a sign of backwardness by European countries. Yet even as Shunga production slowed, shunga were being exported and peddled as “erotic arts” to foreign markets. Pornographic novels were still produced underground, though the language barrier prevented them from becoming widely known abroad. Pornographic arts (now including photography) were still produced by popular demand, but these came to be viewed as low arts.
20th century In the late Taishō period and early Shōwa period, an artistic movement called Eroguronansensu, lit. erotic-grotesque-nonsense, occurred influenced by decadence works of Europe. These words were used because they had an air of a new and modern feeling. Until the 1950s, pornography were still very limited in production. Open sexual expressions were permitted in novels and manga but a strict control was applied on photographs and films. During World War II, pornographic materials were banned altogether.
Influenced by magazines like Playboy, pornographic magazines were printed soon after World War II. These magazines quickly branched to cover all genres and featured pornographic novels as well as pictures. Playboy itself, however, did not succeed in Japan. Its articles were about the American lifestyle; women were mostly non-Asian, interviews were with people largely unknown in Japan, and fashion and sport were American. Instead, it spawned a fetish and a genre known as Yomono, lit. Western things. Playboy revamped its articles and style in the early 2000s in Japan by having Japanese writers write exclusively about Japan and dropping most of the original content.
In the early 1960s, several movie studios began producing “pink movies” to be exclusively viewed in an adult-only movie theater. With censorship laws prohibiting genitals from being seen but otherwise free to express anything, these movies quickly diversified to fill all genres, including rape and bondage. Throughout the 1960s, the “pink films” were mainly produced by low-budget, independent filmmakers such as Koji Wakamatsu. In 1971, the major studio Nikkatsu entered the pink film genre with its higher production values through its Roman porno (lit. romantic porno) series. From the 1960s to the late 1980s, ambiguous censorship laws resulted in hundreds of cases regarding erotica and pornography. At midnight, television stations mostly aired soft-core pornographic movies until their ratings dropped due to the pornographic movies.
Homosexually-oriented magazines began to appear, starting with Barazoku in 1971, which continued publishing until 2004. Homosexual magazines tend to be tailored to particular segments of the population, such as Badi which features younger adult males, Samson, devoted to chubby men, and G-men, featuring muscular men. The websites of these magazines also feature videos produced featuring these respective body types.
1980s The proliferation of pornographic videos in the 1980s commonly called AV, short for adult video, eventually crashed the market for pornographic movie theaters. Rental video stores offered pornography at a price far below that of movie theaters. Because most Japanese families now had at least two television sets and VCRs, more videos were sold. It is rumored, but not supported, that VHS became popular over Betamax format because large numbers of AV were released in VHS format. Few AVs were sold in laserdisc format, but VCDs and later DVDs were used to distribute AV.
In 1983, the Nintendo Family Computer was released and a few pornographic games quickly followed. However, Nintendo wanted these machines to be family oriented and pornographic games were locked out of the market.[citation needed] Computer games with no limitation on content except for censorship laws became a popular way to distribute pornographic games. Early VCDs and DVDs were viewed on personal computers. Because so few Japanese people saw any reason to play games on these platforms, as opposed to video game consoles, playing computer games was sometimes viewed as being synonymous with playing Bishōjo games.
In the late 1980s, the Dōjinshi market expanded. It is estimated that about half of this market consists of pornography. Copyright problems plague the market, yet the dōjinshi market was a common place for one to start before making a debut in a professional magazine. Yaoi began in the dōjinshi market. From the mid 1990s, the dōjinshi market also began making and selling pornographic games.
In 1980s, magazines oriented towards a mature male audience began to offer more explicit content. This was not immediately a major social issue because magazines oriented towards a mature female audience already existed and their content was in some ways more explicit.
1990s According to John Carr, a United Kingdom government adviser on Internet safety policy for children, two-thirds of pedophilic images on the Internet in the late 1990s may have originated in Japan. He further commented “We think that child pornography, in any form, promotes values and sends the message that it is OK to sexually abuse children. It helps pedophiles to justify their ideas or behavior and it desensitizes society as a whole.” Since the law against child pornography in 1999, the proportion is now believed to be less than 2%. ECPAT believes that many child pornography producers have simply turned to producing anime or films featuring adults dressed as children.
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