Hourglass-shaped sex toys casually glide along a conveyor belt through an airy new store in Tokyo, the latest attempt by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell adult products without the shame that is often attached.
At first glance it’s not even obvious that the sleek, colorful products on display are Japan’s favorite sex toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since opening this year.
“Its openness surprised me,” said customer Masafumi Kawasaki, 45, “and made me a bit embarrassed that I’d had a ‘naughty’ image” of the company. I might have thought this was some kind of cosmetics shop,” he added.
Photo: AFP
Although best known for single-use male masturbation aids, known as cups, the Japanese Tenga brand has grown into an intimacy empire, offering toys for men and women, as well as family planning and help for people with sexual disorders.
It is a key player in Japan’s adult goods market that Yano Research Institute in 2016 estimated was worth around 209 billion yen (US$1.3 billion).
Tenga items are sold in dozens of countries, and nearly half the firm’s annual sales of 10 billion yen — a figure that has doubled over the past six years — are from overseas.
Founder Koichi Matsumoto, 57, said that he has long strived to de-stigmatize sexual pleasure.
Sex toys for men existed before Tenga, but their crude designs replicating genitalia kept them underground, far from the mainstream image that his firm projects.
Matsumoto recalled seeing such goods hidden in store corners, their packaging decorated with porn actresses and in some cases, cartoons of young girls.
“Those products seemed to say, ‘please use us to feel lewd and obscene, because that’s what masturbation is,’” he said.
“I found that message debasing and wrong — because it’s a fundamental, important human desire.”
‘LONELY, SINGLE MEN’
Inspired to create something more “positive, friendly and safe,” Matsumoto quit his job as a car salesman and embarked on a mission to bring the industry from the “back alleys into high streets.”
Tenga products are designed to look different from explicit artificial vaginas and vulvas which Matsumoto says objectify women.
The company’s marketing team describes its wares — including the signature bright phallic cups, vibrators and other toys — as “artistic.”
But prejudices remain around the firm, despite creative collaborations for products such as hipster T-shirts.
Tenga cups are still often misconstrued as catering to “lonely, single men seeking a replacement for women,” said Mei Kamiya, a 26-year-old clerk at the new Tenga Land flagship store in Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku district.
But masturbation is “normal for everyone,” while other Tenga products, such as vibrators, can deepen intimacy between partners, she said.
Japan, like many developed nations, is struggling with a low birth rate, which is fueling a looming demographic crisis.
But Matsumoto rejects the suggestion that Tenga products promote sexlessness.
“If anything, I think we’re doing the opposite of encouraging birth rates to fall” in Japan, he said.
‘LESS TABOO’
Tenga sells sperm monitoring kits for couples hoping to conceive, and tools for those suffering from erectile dysfunction.
Some doctors recommend its healthcare products as “one option” to treat sexual disorders, said Mikiya Nakatsuka, a professor of reproductive medicine at Okayama University.
But there is a tendency in Japan to shy away from sex-related topics, including menstruation and contraception, partly due to conservative school sex education, he said.
“Are we going to see midday TV commercials about Tenga any time soon? I don’t think so,” Nakatsuka said.
Even so, Tenga’s “stylishness and its medical usefulness can help make these types of conversations less taboo.”
Going forward, Tenga wants to target the country’s aging population, whose needs it says are often overlooked.
Some elderly people feel they are “automatically assumed to be too old to even have sexual desires,” the firm’s research found.
Others live with and are financially dependent on adult children, giving them little privacy.
For women in older generations, “there was a time when it was considered shameful or unladylike for them to be open or assertive about sex,” Matsumoto said.
“We tell them it is a good, healthy thing.”
While global attention is finally being focused on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) gray zone aggression against Philippine territory in the South China Sea, at the other end of the PRC’s infamous 9 dash line map, PRC vessels are conducting an identical campaign against Indonesia, most importantly in the Natuna Islands. The Natunas fall into a gray area: do the dashes at the end of the PRC “cow’s tongue” map include the islands? It’s not clear. Less well known is that they also fall into another gray area. Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claim and continental shelf claim are not
Since their leader Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and others were jailed as part of several ongoing bribery investigations, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has risen in the polls. Additionally, despite all the many and varied allegations against Ko and most of the top people in the party, it has held together with only a tiny number of minor figures exiting. The TPP has taken some damage, but vastly less than the New Power Party (NPP) did after it was caught up in a bribery scandal in 2020. The TPP has for years registered favorability in the thirties, and a Formosa poll
Nov. 4 to Nov. 10 Apollo magazine (文星) vowed that it wouldn’t play by the rules in its first issue — a bold statement to make in 1957, when anyone could be jailed for saying the wrong thing. However, the introduction to the inaugural Nov. 5 issue also defined the magazine as a “lifestyle, literature and art” publication, and the contents were relatively tame for the first four years, writes Tao Heng-sheng (陶恒生) in “The Apollo magazine that wouldn’t play by the rules” (不按牌理出牌的文星雜誌). In 1961, the magazine changed its mission to “thought, lifestyle and art” and adopted a more critical tone with
Chiayi County is blessed with several worthwhile upland trails, not all of which I’ve hiked. A few weeks ago, I finally got around to tackling Tanghu Historic Trail (塘湖古道), a short but unusually steep route in Jhuci Township (竹崎). According to the Web site of the Alishan National Scenic Area (阿里山國家風景區), the path climbs from 308m above sea level to an elevation of 770m in just 1.58km, an average gradient of 29 percent. And unless you arrange for someone to bring you to the starting point and collect you at the other end, there’s no way to avoid a significant amount
RSS