Well, it’s not just the porn from Japan that’s weird. Actually, i can’t think of anything offhand that i’d consider normal from japan. Even Origami is weird in a way…Doesn’t mean i don’t like Japanese stuff, i AM learning the language.
I’ve only seen one Japanese porn film, that was presented as an “art” film.
Realm of the Senses. Mutual asphyxiation(sp?), culminating with the woman slicing off the penins if her strangled lover, and showing it off around town. Must be at least 20 years since I’ve seen it, so I may have the details slightly wrong.
Very, very strange indeed. Is it representative?
Tsubaki - yes, I’m sure there are all variations in libido. Maybe living in the far North means that couples are a bid stifled - living with in-laws, sleeping in the same room as the kids, having to spend money to go to love hotels etc, makes them seem to prefer tittilation only? The shyness of Northern ment may also explain foreign women not getting as much action as foreign men. I’ve been propositioned many times but if I took them up on the offer, they ran away! My female foreign friends who lived in Japan said the same - this may of course not be the case for Tokyo, which is so unlike the rest of Japan.
Yes, true, but you’d think they’d eventually borrow ideas and improve them, just as they did with cars, motorcycles, cameras, stereos, and everything else.
Already it goes the other way–Japanese developed bukkake porn, and the US quickly copied it with the “American Bukkake” series. So why don’t the Japanese copy, say, the roving-camera-crew-pro-am gonzo porn? I think they could do an excellent version if they tried.
(O, tragedy! Let us weep fo what might have been!)
Well, I’m nowhere near Tokyo, and am quite in the sticks in southern Japan. Where many people live with the in-laws, sleep in the same room as the kids, etc. I’ve been there and done that myself, actually, and it never stifled us (although the moaning had to be toned down a notch 
)
I’m not meaning to be picky, I just get really annoyed with stereotypes (and not just by outsiders towards Japan, also with stereotypes which Japanese hold about Westerners). I’ve learned to play the devil’s advocate a little more avidly lately!
Regarding the flaccidity and “shy male” issue:
A friend once told me that Japanese men are insecure with their penis size, which does suggest that they have been watching a lot of western porn, where of course the male actors are selected for their atypically monstrous cocks, which I imagine is so that they can act as fantasy surrogates for the Americans renting porn, who as we all know are also insecure about their penis size. The result of which is a continuing world of insecure men, with the Japanese getting the short end of the stick. 
To offset this phenomenon, the Japanese need to find a home-grown monster cocksman, who can become their surrogate and show the world that they too can be monstrously unrealistic in porn depictions.
I mean really, I once saw a European porn film where a young Italian woman named Sandy was consecutively gang-banged by five big-schlonged West Africans, nine uncut European men in ski masks, and two “Chinese exchange students” who had teeny weeny dicks. Thei smallness was actually ADVERTISED ON THE BOX, suggesting they had been carefully selected to fulfill a stereotype. Surely it is up to the Japanese, leades of Eastern Porn Front, to fight back!
I even have a name ready for this Nippon John Holmes:
**Ninja Roll **
Well, I can’t really call myself an expert. We’ve done some looking, to be sure, but I haven’t even been able to get my hands on a copy of Blue Movie yet, which I’ve heard is quite good. The porn shops in my neck of the woods are really kind of lame. I agree that the vast majority of porn just leaves me kind of numb… it’s pretty dull stuff. Most of what my wife and I enjoy is foreign films. Much of it is softcore, but they tend to go a bit farther than most American films, and what can I say, they usually do it better.
I’ll tell you a few films we found most interesting… most of them would be found in the “Foreign Films” section of a video store. These are the ones we found most erotic, but bear in mind that tastes vary, of course.
Henry and June: Excellent film, based on the diaries of Anais Nin, specifically regarding her friendship with Henry Miller and his wife June. Fred Ward as Miller was a great choice, and there’s some incredibly erotic scenes.
The Lover: Based on the novel by Marguerite Henry (I think?), a pretty good story and some wonderfully sensuous cinematography. Great use of colour in this one.
The Pillow Book: This was a chance find for us, I picked it up because it has Ewan McGregor, and my wife loves him (it’s OK, I’ve got Kate Winslet). Turned out to be a fantastic story, very erotic. My wife and I still want to paint one another. blush
“Red Shoe Diaries”: This is a Showtime series, overseen by Zalman King, pretty much softcore stuff. It’s kind of hit-and-miss, but there are enough good episodes that it’s worth at least taking a look at. The good ones are good, and the bad ones are at least funny. smirk
Kama Sutra: I think there’s more than one by this title; you want the one directed by Mira Nair. Some gorgeous cinematography, beautiful people (men and women), and the way the main character dances… shiver she’s amazing. My wife and I both enjoyed this immensely.
Center of the World: I got lucky and saw this in the theatre at a local film festival. Incredible. Watch for it when it’s out on video.
Well, there’s a few. Let me know what you think. 
(Me, a porn expert… my mom would be so proud.)
Okay, now I’m convinced of my OP thesis. That’s just whacked.
Unless, of course, the woman was trying to cosmetically alter herself to look like a western porn actress witha big nose. Maybe the sequel shows her getting her eyelids stretched like they do in Korea to look “less Korean.”
I believe The Lover was by Marguerite Duras. Now THERE’s a flick with a semi-studly Asian guy and a white chick, albeit a coquettishly young one.
(mmmmm…Jane March in a Japanese schoolgirl outfit…mmmmmm…loose socks…)
Incidentally, the original Red Shoe Diaries movie has a young David Duchovny in it. So if you want to see his ass, there’s your chance. But it’s still a pretty crappy movie. Fer Chrissakes, he fights it out with his woman’s other lover by playing one-on-one BASKETBALL. Some climax. :rolleyes:
My theory is that Japanese porn is a reflection of a society that is homogenous, overly formal and polite, where individual expression is discouraged, and where obedience and deference to authority is stressed above all else. From what I understand, employees are often required to work long hours, and in many cases the employer even controls what they do in their private life outside of work. That’s like a pressure-cooker with the lid on too tight; it’s gonna blow somewhere. I think that’s why you see such a preponderance of fetish porn: You take a bunch of men who feel powerless in their daily life, and it’s not really surprising that they are going to fantasize about sexual situations of exaggerated dominance, like rape, underage girls, humiliation, and physical abuse. I think it’s a reflection of an uptight society that, although slowly changing, is still dominated by men and treats women as second-class citizens. You can even see this conflict between a rigid society and a darker fantasy sub-culture in the films themselves. You get such absurdities as allowing films to portray women being raped with vacuum cleaners or having excrement smeared over their bodies, yet refusal to show even a single pubic hair.
Having said all that, I hope I haven’t offended anyone. I have nothing but respect for Japanese people, and I’m certainly not trying to say that all Japanese men are perverts or anything ridiculous like that. There is no such thing as a perfect society, so I hope everyone will take my comments in the context of the subject at hand, and not as a slam on anyone.
Forget looking at his ass; check out New Year’s Day. David Duchovny does full frontal nudity. And yep, if you like that kind of stuff, it’s pretty impressive.
The Pillow Book, I have GOT to get my hands on that. Naked Ewan!!!
Oh, and welcome, Avalonian!!! (We’re buds from the Kate Winslet Fan Club!)
you people are sick
Duras! Thanks, Karellan… quite right. And yeah, the Asian guy in The Lover was actually pretty attractive. The movie was actually better than the book, in my opinion.
Yeah, I wasn’t too impressed by the original movie, either… but some of the later episodes were actually pretty good (with Duchovny providing “bookends” to each story with his little dog). Like I say, though, it’s pretty hit-and-miss.
Thanks! Good to see you too… Yeah, didn’t I mention Pillow Book over there too? Not just naked Ewan, full-frontal naked Ewan! And I have to say… pretty impressive! laughs Why do you think my wife liked it so much? 
Actually? Yeah, it’s pretty rare for an Asian guy to be attractive.
:rolleyes:
sigh Sorry… bad phrasing on my part.
Since the OP topic was Japanese porn, and the general un-attractiveness of many of the Asian men in said porn had been discussed and pretty well-established at several points in the thread, I was coming from that context. Hell, most of the Caucasian men in American porn are pretty damn butt-ugly too, so it’s not like I’m trying to take a superior stance.
My comment was not intended as a slam against Asian guys in general, and I can in fact think of lots of attractive Asian guys. Just a badly-chosen word placement… taken by itself it looks terrible. In context of the thread as a whole… shrugs You be the judge.
I apologize if it seemed offensive, though. 'Twas not intended to be so at all.
Okay, that’s it. I’m going over there.
This thread helps to explain one of my peeves too… I’m a fan of Asian women (though not only Asian women), and I’d always been so disappointed with the erotica and pornography that I trolled up on the Net. What’s so wrong with seeing a woman enjoying herself… especially if part of the fantasy is that you, the viewer, as her lover, caused it? I guess some people just don’t like that. ::sigh::
As for the unattractive male actors… I wonder whether they’re there so that the male viewer can relax, knowing that, in the fantasy, he didn’t have to look like Adonis in order to have scored with the female? (I speak only of male/female erotica here.)
I think the idea is that sex is not a “fun” activity in the same way watching a movie is. It’s supposed to be something more intense. Laughter and smiles are not the “correct” response to good sex - an out-of-control scream is.
By the way, I hope people realize that what foreigners say about Japanese girls is based on an extremely biased sample. I’d guess that the kind of girl who goes out with foreigners are more outgoing and confident than the average Japanese. The same can be said about Japanese people living in the US - I’ve met more interesting Japanese people in the US than in Japan. (Proportionally, that is.)
Right, I think that’s the basic answer. But I think also there’s something about the actual physical universe that’s occupied by urban Japanese that manifests itself in their porn. The have so little space, or privacy, or alone time, that I think they’re denied adequate opportunity to become truly comfortable in their own bodies. Everything is so rigid, formalized, polite, that they must repress their physicality constantly. Perhaps as a consequence they move more into their own heads, dematerializing sex until it becomes less about the act or the athleticism or their genital contact with skin and all about the psychology of unabashed sexual expression. Japanese porn is thus an explosion of frustration, a dreamburst of angry imagery and unmet needs twisted by the pressure-cooker of the overstuffed, necessarily overimaginative Japanese head. This would also explain their expertise at trippy or violent, but non-realistic video games.
That would also explain why the men on screen are such poor performers. Maybe it’s hard to find a Japanese man who’s got the right psychology for porn stardom–as a nation they are socialized to repress sexual or physical expression. If, according to the New Yorker, 75% of American men are unable to maintain an erection when another man is in the room (it was an article on the porn industry) the number must be way higher in Japan, land of shame and face and formality. Once naked, and on camera, all they can express is their anger and frustration (and to a degree their “impotence”), momentarily directed at the unfortunate, cowering woman.
This would also explain why the woman are such boring, passive “eep eep eep” performers. Women are probably even more repressed, thus when they’re stripped naked and being filmed, their socialization causes them to feel utter shame and degradation and powerlessness. They close their eyes and endure.
And yet both man and woman are getting off on it, presumably–or they just desperately need the work. Hmmm. I wonder what their parents think? It’s probably enough to make a mother commit ritual *seppuku. *
I guess we all need our outlets of displacement. (Such as a SDMB member really thinking that Japanese are a screwed-up culture, but only having the courage to publically criticize their porn, in an IMHO thread. )
Margaret Cho, fag-hag extroardinaire, has a theory about this very subject. Men in straight porn are unattractive and overweight so that the men who watch straight porn don’t have an accidental “homo moment”!
Straight women, if you want porn that has men that women want to watch, get gay male porn. Otherwise you get the endless clones of Ron Jeremy. :eek:
jayjay