By M.K. Bowes
Copyright © 2004
In this article, I’m going to explore Japanese hentai in relationship
to their culture and comparing to the United States culture.
Unlike in the United States where anime is geared strictly towards young viewing audiences, in Japan, animation enjoys a higher regard. There, anime films routinely hit the box-office charts appealing to a far wider audience. An example is the U.S. box-office hit, Titanic. When it arrived in Japan, the animation movie, Princess Mononoke, was a bigger hit on Japanese soil.
To understand Japanese culture, first one must know that everything in their culture has a name. Unlike in the US where we throw an assortment of media into wide-ranging categories like “comedy” or “action,” the Japanese want their genres to have names. And then they want their sub-genres to have names, etc.
Thus, Japanese anime comes in all types, and for all sorts of people. Unlike in the US, which believes ‘comics are for children,’ the Japanese write for everyone from innocent children (anime) to perverted sex-starved men (hentai). Even women have gotten into the act by creating their own category called, ‘yaoi,’ which deals with gay male romance and sex. However, even with Japanese anime, it tends not to be as simple-minded as the American versions because they deal with issues concerning real realities in life, including death.
The other difference between the US and Japanese anime is each artist has their own individual style, and this style is given to the characters they create. Most characters even have their own tastes in clothes and fashion, which adds to the depth of plots, and well-written stories.
In Japan, anime is an artistic expression. Anime blends art and words to create a unique medium. The art pulls in the mind, and the words make them reality. Merging the two together is truly powerful. Perhaps it is this mix of harsh reality with the tantalizing world of artistic fantasy that makes Japanese anime so appealing?
This brings us to hentai, a sub-genre of anime. Considering all this, it isn’t surprising that erotica and porn have arisen as popular entertainment via the media of comics and animation. In a nation where art forms are as much for adults as anything else, it was inevitable.
Under the censorship laws of Japan, it is illegal to show genitalia, and penetration. Most hentai artists get around this by drawing explicit artwork and then blurring the genitals for printing. When distributed to the U.S., these blanked areas are normally removed, and it’s expected to have these details drawn back in.
Recently, there is a thriving genre of underground anime pornography in Japan, called ‘urabon’ that ignores these censorship laws. It has become prevalent on the internet, because there is no system to keep them in place.
Finally, the passing around of these images and characters is also a part of the Japanese culture. Hentai is considered “open” or “give-away” art by the actual artists, meaning they expect it to be taken, used, and modified.
Hentai is hard-core porn.
In Japan, there is a thriving black market with a long history of supplying everything and anything. Hentai reflects this lack of self-regulation (which is one of the things that makes it so popular in the U.S.). Everything that is taboo in domestic porn is not only available in hentai, it’s expected.
Different forms of hentai can exhibit: incest, rape scenarios, extremely hard bondage, fisting, pissing, scat, bestiality, and even storylines with early-teen girls and boys.
As to the moral implications of this kind of hentai, it might be culturally
impossible for Americans to understand. While no one condones sex with a minor
in Japan, the
Japanese idea of what constitutes a minor is very different from ours (Japanese
law gives conflicting ages of consent;
it varies from 13-17 years of age in different locales. However, a new law
enacted in 1999 makes it illegal to have sex with anyone under 18 in certain
circumstances).
The social taboo against nudity has historically been less stringent in Japan than in the West. Pillow books detailing sexual acts were widely sold in the Edo era (1603–1867), and women and men routinely worked in the nude and bathed in public up to the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912). Although public nudity has ceased since then (except in gender-segregated public baths), the Japanese attitude toward nudity in the media is more liberal than that of the US.
Many common genres of Japanese erotica evolved because of these laws. One example of these is tentacle rape, which is an animated portrayal of rape fantasies involving a human female and a science-fiction-like creature. It emerged as an alternative to depicting the male sex organ.
The Japanese are sexually more open-minded than the US culture, and less repressed when it comes to sex. Remember in my first article I spoke about humans needing an outlet?
In tight-lipped America, it’s really hard to grasp the fact that the Japanese don’t see the violence and sexuality in hentai or their regular anime as something shameful, evil or wrong. They accept it for what it is: an artistic expression or outlet.
In the US country where researchers are claiming that viewing violence leads to acted out violence, this isn’t the case in Japan. According to the 2002 crime statistics, per capita (per 100,000 people), Japan’s crime is 2.0%, compared to the US at 5.4%, and per capita of prisoners behind bars, the US has 546 prisoners behind bars, compared to Japan that only has 37. Therefore, what looks horrific to our eyes isn’t nearly so scary to the Japanese. And if violent imagery, which is so much more commonplace in Japanese hentai than in American porn were a function of the real incidence of violence, you’d expect the Japanese to have considerably MORE crime than Americans, not considerably LESS.
If you want to see hentai as dramatic sexual fantasies, by and for adults, created by a culture that is much more comfortable with sexual imagery than us, well, that’s pretty much what it is.
In summary, hentai is a fascinating, sometimes disturbing market whose presence is continually growing in the American consciousness. We are entranced and repelled by it, and yet, while we love to consume it, we seem unable to re-create it. Virtually every attempt to create actual hentai/anime in the U.S. has failed. Somehow, we just don’t get it.
(Special note: I want to give thanks to Sterling Knight for helping me with
this article)