joezu | Japan Trip Part 2: Porn, Porn Everywhere! (Reply)

(The second in a five-part series about my Fall 2017 trip to Japan)

On a Wednesday, I traveled to Jinbōchō, an area of Tokyo near the Imperial Palace that boasts nearly 200 stores featuring used books of every variety, not only in Japanese but also English and undoubtedly other languages. And sure enough, up and down the many narrow alleys surrounding Jinbōchō station, there they were. The first store that caught my eye on the main street, however, was an adult bookstore with three floors of magazines, DVDs, and toys. Everything I looked at featured female models, so I finally asked the clerk if they had anything gay. He thought for a moment, then led me to one section and pulled a gay bears manga (comic book) from the shelf. There were a few of these, occupying about six inches of shelf space, but that was it. I asked the clerk if there were any gay photo magazines but he said no, though I did see a couple of the “chicks with dicks” variety.

I left, then began exploring the used book stores. After visiting about twenty of them, I found myself on another main street of restaurants, shops, and convenience stores. It was the lunch hour, so the street was quite busy with pedestrians. I saw what appeared to be a magazine store. Inside, there was a small assortment of everyday magazines: fashion, current events, and so on. But the rest of the store was dedicated to porn: a mix of manga and photo mags. Now, in Japan, there are laws on the books regarding the depiction of genitals: they are either not supposed to be shown at all, or must be obscured or hidden (for example, blurred with a digital mosaic or with the model posing behind a strategically-placed vase). Anuses are not considered genitals, so they can be shown. The modern “tentacle sex” genre was supposedly begun to get around the censorship laws. A penis entering a vagina must be blurred, but a tentacle entering an anus? No problem! The enforcement of these laws has always seemed inconsistent, but I was still surprised to see many magazines right in the open featuring completely unobscured genitals. One magazine even featured a woman taking a shit in glorious closeup. And this shop was on a main street? The magazines were all sealed in plastic, so I had no idea what was actually inside. How many of us, in ye olde days before internet porn, have purchased a sealed magazine only to discover the inside was nothing like what was depicted on the cover?

One thing I noticed about Tokyo was there seemed to be no zoning laws, or at least not as we understand them in America. Just walking through Ikebukuro one may see a convenience store next to a house next to a restaurant, or a set of modest apartments right next to a ritzy department store. So perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised at seeing porn shops on main streets. The real surprise, however, came when I walked into a very pristine, elegant book store. There were sports magazines, travel magazines, cooking magazines, and—well, more porn manga! No photo mags, but imagine walking into Barnes & Noble and finding The Hun's “Big Sig and The Coach” a few feet away from Time magazine.

A couple of weeks later I was exploring a luxury shopping mall in Sendai, with stores like Swarovski, Ralph Lauren, Bulgari, Tiffany's and—that's right!—a porn shop. I am tempted to say this is a sign of a sexually progressive society, except we've seen this is not necessarily so. I also didn't see anything in these shops marketed towards women, such as a Japanese equivalent of Playgirl, although there are entire stores dedicated to booizurabu manga (boys' love comics). These aren't porn, but usually romantic stories about high school boys or college age men in love—sort of the equivalent of a Harlequin romance novel. There is a depiction of romance (kissing, holding hands) or post-coital scenes (cuddling in bed), but usually no nudity aside from the occasional butt, and no graphic images of sex. Most gay men in Japan don't read these; there are separate gay comics aimed at gay men. But except for Shinjuku Ni-Chōme (Tokyo's primary gay district) and the store in Jinbōchō with the gay bears manga, I did not see gay porn anywhere else.

Part 1: Fisting in Shinjuku
Part 2: Porn, Porn Everywhere!
Part 3: Going to an Onsen
Part 4: Japanese Bondage
Part 5: Miscellaneous Anecdotes