Tokyo:
Hourglass-shaped intercourse toys casually glide alongside a conveyor belt by way of an ethereal new retailer in Tokyo, the newest try by Japanese producer Tenga to promote grownup merchandise with out the disgrace that’s typically hooked up.
At first look it is not even apparent that the glossy, vibrant merchandise on show are Japan’s favorite intercourse toys for males, however the retailer has drawn a stream of {couples} and vacationers since opening this 12 months.
“Its openness stunned me,” stated buyer Masafumi Kawasaki, 45, “and made me a bit embarrassed that I would had a ‘naughty’ picture” of the corporate.
“I may need thought this was some form of cosmetics store,” he added.
Though finest recognized for single-use male masturbation aids, referred to as cups, the Japanese Tenga model has grown into an intimacy empire, providing toys for women and men, in addition to household planning and assist for individuals with sexual problems.
It’s a key participant in Japan’s grownup items market that Yano Analysis Institute in 2016 estimated was price round 209 billion yen ($1.3 billion).
Tenga gadgets are bought in dozens of nations, and almost half the agency’s annual gross sales of 10 billion yen — a determine that has doubled over the previous six years — are from abroad.
Founder Koichi Matsumoto, 57, informed AFP that he has lengthy strived to de-stigmatise sexual pleasure.
Intercourse toys for males existed earlier than Tenga, however their crude designs replicating genitalia stored them underground, removed from the mainstream picture that his agency initiatives.
Matsumoto recalled seeing such items hidden in retailer corners, their packaging adorned with porn actresses and in some circumstances, cartoons of younger ladies.
“These merchandise appeared to say, ‘please use us to really feel lewd and obscene, as a result of that is what masturbation is’,” he stated.
“I discovered that message debasing and incorrect — as a result of it is a elementary, essential human want.”
‘Lonely, single males’
Impressed to create one thing extra “constructive, pleasant and protected”, Matsumoto give up his job as a automotive salesman and launched into a mission to carry the business from the “again alleys into excessive streets”.
Tenga merchandise are designed to look completely different from express synthetic vaginas and vulvas which Matsumoto says objectify ladies.
The corporate’s advertising group describes its wares — together with the signature shiny phallic cups, vibrators and different toys — as “inventive”.
However prejudices stay across the agency, regardless of inventive collaborations for merchandise comparable to hipster T-shirts.
Tenga cups are nonetheless typically misconstrued as catering to “lonely, single males looking for a substitute for ladies”, stated Mei Kamiya, a 26-year-old clerk on the new Tenga Land flagship retailer in Tokyo’s stylish Harajuku district.
However masturbation is “regular for everybody”, whereas different Tenga merchandise, comparable to vibrators, can deepen intimacy between companions, she stated.
Japan, like many developed nations, is scuffling with a low delivery charge, which is fuelling a looming demographic disaster.
However Matsumoto rejects the suggestion that Tenga merchandise promote sexlessness.
“If something, I believe we’re doing the other of encouraging delivery charges to fall” in Japan, he stated.
‘Much less taboo’
Tenga sells sperm monitoring kits for {couples} hoping to conceive, and instruments for these affected by erectile dysfunction.
Some docs advocate its healthcare merchandise as “one possibility” to deal with sexual problems, stated Mikiya Nakatsuka, a professor of reproductive medication at Okayama College.
However there’s a tendency in Japan to shrink back from sex-related matters, together with menstruation and contraception, partly because of conservative faculty intercourse training, he informed AFP.
“Are we going to see noon TV commercials about Tenga any time quickly? I do not suppose so,” Nakatsuka stated.
Even so, Tenga’s “stylishness and its medical usefulness will help make these kind of conversations much less taboo”.
Going ahead, Tenga needs to focus on the nation’s ageing inhabitants, whose wants it says are sometimes neglected.
Some aged individuals really feel they’re “robotically assumed to be too previous to even have sexual needs”, the agency’s analysis discovered.
Others stay with and are financially depending on grownup kids, giving them little privateness.
For girls in older generations, “there was a time when it was thought-about shameful or unladylike for them to be open or assertive about intercourse,” Matsumoto stated.
“We inform them it’s a good, wholesome factor.”