Unlike the case of Taiwan, the social reality that is relevant to the consumption of Japanese AVs in Hong Kong is not related purely to the local sexual order, but depends on a cultural logic that underpins the emergence of Hong Kong identity in the 1980s. Elsewhere (Yau and Wong 2009) we have demonstrated that […]

Taiwanese men and women display entirely different patterns in terms of their preference for pornography. Elsewhere, we have explored these differences (Wong and Yau 2012; Wong and Yau 2014), here we simply wish to point out that Taiwanese men tend to prefer Japanese AVs over American pornography. The narrative structure of typical bishojo AVs, according […]

We have to point out that the popularity of Japanese AVs in Taiwan has much to do with the local sexual culture. In our recent joint paper (Wong and Yau 2011), we demonstrated that so-called sexual subjectivities in Taiwan are discursively constituted and thus cultural, although they appear to be ‘real’ and thus universal to […]

In what follows, we shall see how these heterogeneous soft-core domestic-oriented Japanese AVs migrated to Taiwan and Hong Kong and interacted with local Taiwanese and Hong Kong consumers respectively. Japanese AVs come to Taiwan Taiwan was a Japanese colony between 1898 and 1945. From 1945 to the late 1980s, Taiwan was under the authoritarian Kuomintang […]

As the name implies, Japanese AVs were originally released in the form of videotapes that lasted about 60 minutes. Since VHS tapes were prohibitively expensive in the 1980s, Japanese AVs were originally produced for rental outlets but have also been available for purchase since the mid-1990s. Thanks to recent technological advances, Japanese AVs are now […]

We argue below that the historical agency demonstrated by local consumers of Japanese AVs can be better understood through the concept of ‘pornographic reality’ proposed by Hardy (2009). Hardy argues that pornographic realism is the defining characteristic of pornography production. Put bluntly, the more ‘realistic’ pornography appears to be to the audience, the more it […]

Heung Wah Wong and Hoi Yan Yau Introduction Since the late 1990s, Japanese adult videos (AVs) as both media and cultural products have spread to other Asian societies, especially to Hong Kong and Taiwan, and have exerted tremendous influence on the sexual cultures of these societies. The extent of this influence ranges from the local […]

The number of obscenity cases brought before the courts since the 1970s has been relatively small due to a range of self-regulatory mechanisms in place across all Japanese media industries that advise members on permissible limits. Japanese movies as well as overseas film imports are overseen by Eiga Rinri Kanri Iinkai, a professional body which […]

Takahashi Tetsu (1907—70) was the most prominent of a number of popular sex writers who took advantage of the new more open rhetorical climate during the Occupation to discuss previously taboo sexual topics, particularly marital sexuality, in the press. Takahashi was a well- known public intellectual and commentator on sexual issues from the late 1940s […]

One of the first edicts delivered by the Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) after the surrender of August 1945 required the dismantling of the Japanese censorship system (Rubin 1988: 169). The Press Code for Japan, announced in September 1945, provided an extensive list of guidelines for prohibited material — mainly focusing on militarist […]