Forum - View topicAnswerman - Is Japan Or America More Prudish About Sexual Content?
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Mr March
 Posts: 18 |
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Great article and I couldn't agree more. Both Japanese and American culture suffer bad social habits and taboos toward sexual health and expression. The two countries simply get it wrong in totally different ways. More's the pity.
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gpanthony
Posts: 241 |
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Those are pretty interesting comparisons... My first full on sex ed class was in 8th grade at my Catholic middle school in the 90's, and they gave a pretty comprehensive course about birth control and protective measures back then, so it's always been a surprise when people talk about their Christian schools being so uptight about it. I do remember we did have to get permission slips to attend the course, though, but we had those for a similar course in my public high school too. |
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RegSuzaku
Posts: 267 Location: Ikebukuro |
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Why does this focus so much on stereotypical hetero porn?
Non-hetero porn is the only kind that matters, to me at least... and I feel like cowardliness of a society isn't a measure at all of the availability. (I don't say "prude", I say "coward". There's nothing prudent about being afraid of sex). America would never have something like the BL genre. America has erotic novels, and most BL aren't better written than that (oh, and Japan also has a huge industry of hetero romantic/erotic manga for women, that never gets talked about overseas, except when they pick what must be the absolute worst ones to make those short anime of). But it exists. If you go into any Animate store, there's an entire BL section, including several pretty explicit large posters that anyone in the store can see. They don't have genitals showing, but they have shirtless men touching all over each other, and their facial expressions are unambiguously sexual. ... but then if you look at the only BL series that actually has a plot... it's from China, which we all know is way more cowardly about sex. That, and one from Australia, which is also worse than America or Japan. Though both of those authors probably grew up on Japanese media, so like... nowadays, you can't really say anything about artists based on what country they live in, especially when it's just one series. (Having a long, well-plotted story that's treated with respect, and not being afraid to put a lot of erotic content into it, is the next step the world needs to take). Americans are more open about one man with a beard and one woman with big boobs having sex in a room in one of their houses. Nowadays, they're okay with two men with beards, or two women with big boobs having sex in a room in one of their houses. But, more than two people? Perverted. Her boobs aren't big enough, or his beard isn't big enough? Perverted. Not caring what gender they are? Somehow, even the LGBT activists will call you perverted for this. Somewhere other than your house? Perverted. etc. Oh, and Europe is its own messed-up situation. They might be more open about it socially, but they are still 100% convinced that any sort of enjoyment of sex at all is going to send you to Hell. So they still call it dirty, and call it sin, and use words like "naughty" about it, which is just as bad as not doing it or showing it at all. Sex isn't naughty or dirty or sinful. It's beautiful, and it should be treated like a beautiful poem. That's... really the number one thing that would bring to most positive change to the world. |
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OjaruFan2
Posts: 661 |
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There's one old manga series from 1989-1990 called "1+2=Paradise" that, according to Wikipedia (with credible sources), was so controversial for its sexual content that it was labeled as a "harmful manga" by local and national governmental agencies in Japan. I checked out a little bit of the OVA adaptation back in 2017, and I gotta say, the content made me feel uncomfortable.
I'm just curious, what would be some examples of personal beliefs and values of why a parent would try REALLY hard to keep their kids sheltered from sexual impulses? Last edited by OjaruFan2 on Wed Jan 23, 2019 9:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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That is the basic truth to it. The only thing that makes each individual country's attitudes overall make sense is that they've got opposing ideologies at war with each other and what is accepted for different issues depends on a massively complicated interplay of factors.
Gonna have to disagree there. Sex education in Australia is considerably better than sex education in America, though not without its own problems here and there. We're also far less squeamish about referring to things by their actual names rather than some kind of euphemism. (Though even America is better at that than Japan.) |
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Gemnist
Posts: 1758 |
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It could be various things. For example, several religions find it sinful to engage in sexual activity prior to marriage, and many more find it ethically wrong to engage in sexually deviant behavior ranging from spoiler[masturbation to homosexuality to full-on kinkiness]. Additionally, there's safety hazards such as the aforementioned unintentional pregnancy and STDs. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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While this article is about sexual content and thus such discussion is expected, we are not going to turn this into another generalized "pity the hetero straight guy" debate where it's all some social agenda against them. So if you're only goal is to spread that notion then save your breath and move on.
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mewpudding101
Industry Insider
 Posts: 2206 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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Some of Japan's sexual regulations are ridiculous (really--do mosaics REALLY do anything?), but yeah, the prude attitude is just different, not more lax or strict.
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crosswithyou
 Posts: 2892 Location: California |
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There's plenty of nanpa going on in places like Shinjuku. This hasn't been mentioned anywhere but since it's been in the news lately, convenience stores in Japan can sell adult magazines in the open on the regular magazine racks because there's a sense of trust that people who shouldn't be looking at that (ie. minors) won't be looking at them. Of course there's always kids sneaking a peek at their elder sibling's porn collection under the bed and things like that, but in general, the "rule" is pretty much followed, probably because there's the sense of shame if they were caught. In the U.S. however, I think kids would have a harder time keeping their curiosity in check. |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Yeah, pretty much. I don't know what it's like in, say, Europe, but America seems to be trying incredibly hard to have its cake and censor it too. Concealing the existence of sex from minors is part of it--movie ratings skip straight to R if there's any nudity whatsoever--but there's also the general sense that sex is "naughty" at any age. Presumably this comes from conflict between the whole Puritanism thing and the fact that it's an inevitable part of life for all multicellular beings. Sex is commodified to a ridiculous degree but, in public, it always has to be wrapped up in implication and innuendo because it's wrong and evil even though nearly everyone wants it. To some degree, we seem to like it this way because it makes one of biology's oldest inventions seem hip and rebellious. Modern Japan is heavily influenced by the US so, unsurprisingly, they've imported some of that cognitive dissonance and made it even more convoluted by trying to combine it with their own cultural opinions. |
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crosswithyou
Posts: 2892 Location: California |
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I wonder if this will change in the future... I mean, movies used to be rated R solely based on explicit language. Now you have curse words even on network TV. |
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Compelled to Reply
 Posts: 358 |
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It's said a lot of that porno is said to come from sexual repression, although that's a dubious claim. So many Japanese are MGTOW and/or not interested in a relationship, so applying sexual fantasies that would otherwise turn people away seems lucrative. Also, technically, "soapland" masseuses aren't prostitutes by a loophole in the law. It's the same with call girls in the West on Internet classifieds, who say they're not soliciting prostitution when it's quite obvious from the pictures and the rest of their language. As for human trafficking, most of it comes from the Philippines, who is now doing their part to crack down on the other end, as destination countries have tried everything in their control to no avail. |
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TexZero
Posts: 583 |
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Depends on what you qualify as anything. Clearly it's still selling or at the very least being watched, so from a buisness standpoint not really. However that doesn't really count for the imagination. Though it would be much more entertaining for the industry in Japan to own the mosiacs and just had fun with it. Make the censored areas for men bigger than the prosthetics used for western stuff. See how much the imagination runs wild at that point. Just don't go so big that the screen is one giant mosiac 
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FireballDragon
 Posts: 683 |
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Bonus points for the Shimoneta thumbnail. How about a hand spank?
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MasterChef117
Posts: 5 |
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Ratings for violence and profanity are way more lax than they used to be. But ratings for sex are still ridiculously strict. Lord knows we can't have children seeing a bare butt, but hearing the f-word and seeing people get shot with blood everywhere is perfectly fine. |
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