Museum of Spring
Aug. 21st, 2006 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThe Museum of Sex, on New York's 5th Avenue, is currently hosting an exhibition called Peeping, Probing, and Porn: Four Centuries of Graphic Sex in Japan. Robert Schuster, reviewing the show in the Village Voice, describes "a bashful, wide-eyed 
octopus" in a woodblock print by Hokusai. "You'd never guess that the innocent creature leads a secret life of debauchery. But... there he is... his bulbous head pushed between the legs of a young woman, delivering a rather well-received session of cunnilingus."
"The exhibit's prints," continues Shuster, "most of which date from the mid 1800s, display all the familiar possibilities—positions and penetrations, threesomes, masturbation, voyeurs, dildos—and typically involve Edo's high-priced prostitutes known as oiran. But to please other tastes, the artists ranged across wider territory. Among several domestic fantasies, one attributed to Kikugawa Eizan (another stylish craftsman) shows a baby boy suckling the breasts of his mother as she
engages a man at the other end. There are also medically detailed close-ups (sometimes from brothel guidebooks), obligatory scenes of rape and bondage, and plenty of satire. A spirited work from the normally utilitarian Utagawa School places an embarrassed couple copulating en plein air opposite three snickering dogs, whose jaunty postures and sly expressions suggest the artist's bemused regard of shunga."
Shunga literally means "things of the spring", but an exhibition like this reminds us that spring wasn't born yesterday. So how does Japanese culture today deal with "things of the spring"? To answer this question (and a request yesterday from reader Yuki Tsukishiro, who said "I've lately had a craving for a new Momus post about Japanese pornography"), I turned to the free movie sections of two of my favourite Japanese pink sites, BabyPink and S-Camera.
Rather than woodblock prints, BabyPink's movie of the day offers an instructional video featuring two fresh-faced girls called Miss Kitajima and Miss Tazima:
File 1: In the first RealPlayer segment the girls present, rather in the manner of a consumer report, a rubber penis strapped to a plastic office chair. The chair is transparent, so we can see from below what happens when first Miss Kitajima then Miss Tazima straddles the long, solid rubber prong. While one rides, the other milks. It's quite realistic. Afterwards, the girls tell us the experience has been fun but strange.
File 2: The girls, now dressed as maids, kneel at the feet of a man (made of flesh this time) and tell him he's going to feel really good in a moment. There's extensive kissing, fingering and oral-genital contact. The flesh man then penetrates one of the "maids" from behind while the other licks his man-nipples.
Some kind of glitch (a "503 error") prevents me from telling you what happened in the next three files, but it seems likely that the girls got it on with various partners in an increasing frenzy.
Over on S-Camera, meanwhile, the movie of the day is Sex High School. (To see clips you'll probably have to enter through the site's main page, run a text search on "Sex High School", then click the link.)
File 1: A high school student -- played by an actress machine translation renders as Fragrance Hill Lily -- in a locker room lifts her skirt, exclaiming friskily "Mo, etchi!" ("Stop that, pervert!"). She kneads her own breasts, then asks if we want to see her pantsu. Protracted self-stimulation follows, with occasional running commentary from the girl, who begins gouging into her sex with pointed pink fingernails. Apparently it isn't too painful.
File 2: Fragrance Hill Lily is now sporting a lab coat and stethoscope. She's a "doctor who accepts health insurance patients in the hygienic room", says the blurb. The rapid change in role establishes this as a cosplay movie. Sensei, sitting on her desk, begins to apply friction to the area of "our penis" with her bare feet, which are rather beautiful. "Does the rubbing feel good?" she asks. Soon she's grasping our erect manhood between the soles of her feet and, to our surprise, we're telling her in fluent Japanese that we're about to come. There's a distant sound of barking dogs as we discharge a small dollop of "milk" onto her right foot. "Ah, sugoy!" she exclaims, maternally.
File 3: A high school student once more, Fragrance Lily is receiving private tuition from a long-haired teacher (he looks more like a rock star, though). When she grabs him he seems rather shocked, but, as his bronzed, undressed torso gets extensively kissed, he seems not to object too strenuously. "It felt good," he concedes gruffly as Fragrance takes his penis in her mouth. His long hair and buffed body make the ensuing sex scene, which happens (by municipal ordinance 2958) on a classroom desktop, seem somewhat lesbian. "Oh, teacher!" cries Fragrance, but we can't help suspecting that this is her boyfriend in real life. There's a surprise ending: not the three spurts of milk Fragrance welcomes into her mouth, but the suddenly discovery by teacher that there's a voyeur hiding behind the classroom door. It's us. We'd better go.
octopus" in a woodblock print by Hokusai. "You'd never guess that the innocent creature leads a secret life of debauchery. But... there he is... his bulbous head pushed between the legs of a young woman, delivering a rather well-received session of cunnilingus.""The exhibit's prints," continues Shuster, "most of which date from the mid 1800s, display all the familiar possibilities—positions and penetrations, threesomes, masturbation, voyeurs, dildos—and typically involve Edo's high-priced prostitutes known as oiran. But to please other tastes, the artists ranged across wider territory. Among several domestic fantasies, one attributed to Kikugawa Eizan (another stylish craftsman) shows a baby boy suckling the breasts of his mother as she
engages a man at the other end. There are also medically detailed close-ups (sometimes from brothel guidebooks), obligatory scenes of rape and bondage, and plenty of satire. A spirited work from the normally utilitarian Utagawa School places an embarrassed couple copulating en plein air opposite three snickering dogs, whose jaunty postures and sly expressions suggest the artist's bemused regard of shunga."Shunga literally means "things of the spring", but an exhibition like this reminds us that spring wasn't born yesterday. So how does Japanese culture today deal with "things of the spring"? To answer this question (and a request yesterday from reader Yuki Tsukishiro, who said "I've lately had a craving for a new Momus post about Japanese pornography"), I turned to the free movie sections of two of my favourite Japanese pink sites, BabyPink and S-Camera.
Rather than woodblock prints, BabyPink's movie of the day offers an instructional video featuring two fresh-faced girls called Miss Kitajima and Miss Tazima:File 1: In the first RealPlayer segment the girls present, rather in the manner of a consumer report, a rubber penis strapped to a plastic office chair. The chair is transparent, so we can see from below what happens when first Miss Kitajima then Miss Tazima straddles the long, solid rubber prong. While one rides, the other milks. It's quite realistic. Afterwards, the girls tell us the experience has been fun but strange.
File 2: The girls, now dressed as maids, kneel at the feet of a man (made of flesh this time) and tell him he's going to feel really good in a moment. There's extensive kissing, fingering and oral-genital contact. The flesh man then penetrates one of the "maids" from behind while the other licks his man-nipples.
Some kind of glitch (a "503 error") prevents me from telling you what happened in the next three files, but it seems likely that the girls got it on with various partners in an increasing frenzy.
Over on S-Camera, meanwhile, the movie of the day is Sex High School. (To see clips you'll probably have to enter through the site's main page, run a text search on "Sex High School", then click the link.)File 1: A high school student -- played by an actress machine translation renders as Fragrance Hill Lily -- in a locker room lifts her skirt, exclaiming friskily "Mo, etchi!" ("Stop that, pervert!"). She kneads her own breasts, then asks if we want to see her pantsu. Protracted self-stimulation follows, with occasional running commentary from the girl, who begins gouging into her sex with pointed pink fingernails. Apparently it isn't too painful.
File 2: Fragrance Hill Lily is now sporting a lab coat and stethoscope. She's a "doctor who accepts health insurance patients in the hygienic room", says the blurb. The rapid change in role establishes this as a cosplay movie. Sensei, sitting on her desk, begins to apply friction to the area of "our penis" with her bare feet, which are rather beautiful. "Does the rubbing feel good?" she asks. Soon she's grasping our erect manhood between the soles of her feet and, to our surprise, we're telling her in fluent Japanese that we're about to come. There's a distant sound of barking dogs as we discharge a small dollop of "milk" onto her right foot. "Ah, sugoy!" she exclaims, maternally.
File 3: A high school student once more, Fragrance Lily is receiving private tuition from a long-haired teacher (he looks more like a rock star, though). When she grabs him he seems rather shocked, but, as his bronzed, undressed torso gets extensively kissed, he seems not to object too strenuously. "It felt good," he concedes gruffly as Fragrance takes his penis in her mouth. His long hair and buffed body make the ensuing sex scene, which happens (by municipal ordinance 2958) on a classroom desktop, seem somewhat lesbian. "Oh, teacher!" cries Fragrance, but we can't help suspecting that this is her boyfriend in real life. There's a surprise ending: not the three spurts of milk Fragrance welcomes into her mouth, but the suddenly discovery by teacher that there's a voyeur hiding behind the classroom door. It's us. We'd better go.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-22 01:24 am (UTC)This is common knowledge. The industry depends upon recruiting girls already in the hostess/mizu shobai industry, especially those with lots of debt. Have you ever met hostesses? They are all generally from podunk towns in Hiroshima-ken etc. Huge surprise, but they are not from upper middle-class families in the affluent suburbs of Tokyo. Same goes with schoolgirl prostitutes - a working class/lumpen runaway phenomenon. Whether Japan has a "big middle class" or not, there are lower classes (mostly congregating around rural areas) and they do make up a large majority of the sexual industry.
(Do you want to now claim that Yoshiwara girls were all "normal" and "classless" and performing sexual services out of some sense of liberation and personal gratification?)
What is clear from your response is that you realize that you have to deny the class-exploitation component to openly enjoy Japanese pornography. Japanese porn actresses do not appear so explicitly deviant as American actresses, and half of the appeal is the normalcy.
(I think I've told this story before, but...)
I was at the fashion-porn photographer and Egg founder Yonehara's house one day and I was asking him about porn actresses in Japan. "Oh they are totally normal!" he says, pointing out his good friend in a copy of "All White Panties." I ask, "What's her story?" "Oh, she was raped by her brother."
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-22 06:53 am (UTC)The industry depends upon recruiting girls already in the hostess/mizu shobai industry, especially those with lots of debt.
By your argument, all this recruiting should be going on in the countryside, not in the big cities.
Have you ever met hostesses? They are all generally from podunk towns in Hiroshima-ken etc.
So now your claim is no longer that these are girls "from the country", but that they're girls "from pudunk towns"?
Huge surprise, but they are not from upper middle-class families in the affluent suburbs of Tokyo.
Now who said they were upper middle class or affluent? A transparent attempt to beat my argument back to specific minorities, when it's your argument which makes such claims.
Same goes with schoolgirl prostitutes - a working class/lumpen runaway phenomenon.
Although you constantly make the link between AV actresses and prostitutes, they are not the same thing at all.
Whether Japan has a "big middle class" or not, there are lower classes (mostly congregating around rural areas) and they do make up a large majority of the sexual industry.
The lower classes mostly live in the countryside? That's news to me! All those tarp and plyboard residences in Ueno Park or next to Osaka zoo -- I should be looking for them out in the paddy fields or up in the mountains? Aren't poor people drawn to cities in highly urbanized nations? Because that's where the work is? Why would anyone poor "congregate" in the countryside?
Also, I'd like to see just one solid scholarly source for this "everybody knows" assertion (from someone who also claims not to know much) that AV actresses are all drawn from a minority caste.
Do you want to now claim that Yoshiwara girls were all "normal" and "classless" and performing sexual services out of some sense of liberation and personal gratification?
I'm not actually saying anything about the caste of women in the sex industry. You're the one making unsupported assertions, and now you're trying to make it look as if I'm doing the same thing! All I did was describe what happens in two videos! Is it "common knowledge" that I'm saying AV girls are all super-bourgeois?
What is clear from your response is that you realize that you have to deny the class-exploitation component to openly enjoy Japanese pornography. Japanese porn actresses do not appear so explicitly deviant as American actresses, and half of the appeal is the normalcy.
I'm not sure why that's "clear from my response", since I never said it!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-22 10:32 am (UTC)Westerners always get really credulous when they watch porn, believing that somehow there was only one linda lovelace and that everyone else is willing, happy and healthy. Why think the Japanese industry is any different?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-22 08:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-22 09:38 pm (UTC)Nakajima Ai, former pornstar, current mainstream talento documents her own similar experience in her bestseller autobiography, and appeared in public service campaigns about getting overly indebted, and the consequences.
That and a reasonable knowledge of the recruiting process, which I've seen discussed on NHK and in Japanese magazines.
It is absolutely common knowledge. Ask a Japanese friend. It seems like you don't even disagree, you just want to give marxy a hard time for asserting something mildly unpleasant about a really nice country. (though please don't ask me for proof that Japan is nice. I like to think it's common knowledge.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-22 10:02 pm (UTC)Come on, name the town! It's probably in the hundreds of thousands, isn't it?
But even if it's the hick sticks, this is the problem with anecdotal evidence. One actress you dated once becomes every actress ever. It's cute when it's a "she's every woman, it's all in her" sort of feeling about your wife or whoever, but it's not exactly sociology, is it?
I think Marxy often uses stats and class-centric sociology as a fig-leaf to cover up a certain snobby disdain he has for certain groups of people. He seems to have a rather puritanical view of sex, but instead of telling us AV actresses are "dirty", he projects onto us the view that they're clean and normal, then "corrects" this view by telling us they're poor and uneducated and come from the country. It's just a more circuitous way of saying "Ug, those girls are dirty!"
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-22 10:23 pm (UTC)But I'm not gonna waste time responding to you respoding to a strawman marxy. I've never met the guy.
I told you why it's common knowledge... common enough knowledge that the government asked a former actress to talk about her experience as a cautionary tale to others. If you choose to continue suspending your disbelief, more power to you. You always have had trouble understanding people for whom money ever causes the slightest problems...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-22 11:24 pm (UTC)Marxy is saying AV girls are all "lower class girls from the countryside", and you confirm this by reference to an AV girl you once dated who came from a "relatively big" town? Perhaps I'm being obtuse, but this makes no sense to me, Nate. I also don't see what meeting Marxy has to do with it, or the government asking ex-AV actresses to warn others off the trade. As I keep saying, I'm not making any assertions about AV actresses at all here, just describing what happens in some plots.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-23 02:04 pm (UTC)Iijima Ai is the name of the actress, and her story is very, very common. Read Platonic Sex (or I know, Google it!)
Again: your strong denial of all these very, very well-known issues suggest you wouldn't love Japanese AV so much if you knew these girls were being economically exploited (rather than sexually exploited.) You have yet to say: I don't care if they are poor and desperate and in debt, because they do it FOR ME.
He seems to have a rather puritanical view of sex, but instead of telling us AV actresses are "dirty", he projects onto us the view that they're clean and normal, then "corrects" this view by telling us they're poor and uneducated and come from the country.
I am not saying that "porn" is bad, but realize that many factors in the labor system go against some of your natural "socialist" positions. You can't have both in this one.
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-27 04:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-27 04:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-22 09:47 pm (UTC)Looking at the industy publication from where I used to live, over 1/500 women were up for sale during any given month.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-23 11:03 am (UTC)It does seem quite likely though that someone from outside a big city would be more successfully conned and exploited if for no other reason than young people hold fantasies of getting away from where they grew up.
Then again one doesn't really know the ratio of actresses somehow persuaded into vs pursuing the work.