This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.
Picture the scene… A woman wearing a floral micro miniskirt and white jacket enters a room with her boyfriend. He gently sits her down on a chair and approaches her from behind. He raises her arms and wraps a blindfold around her. She seems worried as he slides a hand into her underwear. Later, she stands naked, facing a window offering a glorious nighttime skyline view as he approaches her from behind and slowly penetrates, Josei Seven (6/15) says.
If it sounds like a scene out of a porno flick, it should. Because that’s precisely what it is. But it’s a dirty DVD with a difference: It’s one targeted specifically at women and was available at all stores across the country, even those frequented by families.
“Dirty DVD for Girls,” the movie from which the scene is derived, was a special giveaway purchases of the May 31 edition of an an, one of Japan’s most popular women’s magazines.
“We sold about 500,000 copies of the sex issue, which is around 200,000 more than usual,” a spokeswoman for Magazine House, publisher of an an, tells Josei Seven.
For the past 15 years, an an has produced an annual “sex issue.” It’s often been controversial; like in 1998, when it featured SMAP heartthrob Takuya Kimura, then at the height of his popularity, in sex scenes with a foreign woman. Or again the following year, when another SMAP member, Shingo Katori, posed nude, as well as in 2002 when squeaky-clean actress Ryoko Shinohara offered seminude shots.
When it first started, an an’s sex issue was fairly tame, offering mild recommendations to women, like how white lingerie can be a turn-on. Now, though, it’s full-throttle sex, using detailed graphic depictions to explain techniques and positions, steamy photos and even explanations on combating sexually transmitted diseases.
Apart from the dirty DVD for dames, which was a first for the an an sex issue, this year’s issue has an extensive interview with Kumi Koda, the singer attributed for sparking Japan’s boom in the culture erokawa — erotic kawaii, or cute.
“Dirty DVD for Girls” was made by a major Japanese adult movie company, one of the many tapping into a pornographic cinema market the women’s weekly says is worth 10 billion yen a year. It starred Nana Natsume, a 24-year-old who is one of the biggest stick flick starlets in Japan, which also became a talking point for the an an sex issue.
“Ten years ago, the adult movie market was said to be only about one-tenth of that for men. What movies there were for women were more like ‘How to’ types that explained positions and techniques rather than actual movies with storylines or sex scenes,” Kamon Taira, an adult movie critic, tells Josei Seven. “Those sorts of movies weren’t the kind that sexually mature women were going to watch. Women want adult movies where the sex scenes are given more weight than storylines, too. But they don’t want close-ups of bosoms or genitals. They want to be charmed by the looks of the men appearing in the films and the atmosphere of the places where the sex is happening.”
“Dirty DVD for Girls” comes in two parts, each of which is about 15 minutes long. There are no scenes of women fondling male genitals and no ejaculation shots, both points that men’s magazines have cited as reasons for the an an giveaway leaving them limp. But women are looking for something different with their dirty DVDs.
“We want to check how ‘real’ they can get it. Like, whether the clothes the women are wearing are fashionable or not,” a 29-year-old female office worker says. “The guy (in ‘Dirty DVD for Girls’) didn’t wear the skimpy little undies you’d expect in an adult movie, but instead had on a pair of boxers with plenty of room to move, which was a refreshing change and made it easier to watch.”
A 41-year-old housewife agrees that women like dirty DVDs.
“It’d be really nice if rental video stores had sections for adult movies targeting women,” she tells Josei Seven. “We don’t want the ‘How to’ stuff. Give us the stuff that’s gonna make us feel good.”
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(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)