Hourglass-shaped sex toys slide casually along a conveyor belt through an airy new store in Tokyo, the latest effort by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell adult products without the shame that is often associated with it.
It’s not even obvious at first glance that the sleek, colorful products on display are Japan’s favorite sex toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since opening this year.
“The openness of it surprised me and made me a little embarrassed that I had a ‘naughty’ image of the company,” said 45-year-old customer Masafumi Kawasaki.
He added, “I would have thought it would be some kind of cosmetics store.”
Although best known for single-use male masturbation aids known as cups, the Japanese Tenga brand has evolved into an intimacy empire, offering toys for men and women, as well as family planning and help for those with sexual disorders. Offers.
It is a major player in Japan’s adult goods market, which in 2016 was estimated by the Yano Research Institute to be worth approximately 209 billion yen ($1.3 billion).
Tenga items are sold in dozens of countries, and about half of the company’s annual sales of 10 billion yen – which have doubled in the past six years – come from overseas.
Founder Koichi Matsumoto, 57, told AFP he has been trying to destigmatize sexual pleasure for a long time.
Sex toys for men existed before Tenga, but their crude designs that mimicked genitals kept them underground, far from the mainstream image projected by their firm.
Matsumoto remembered seeing such items hidden in the corners of stores, their packaging decorated with cartoons of porn actresses and, in some cases, young girls.
“Those products seem to say ‘please use us to make us feel gross and vulgar, because that’s what masturbation is’,” she said.
“I found that message offensive and wrong – because it is a fundamental, important human desire.”
‘Alone, single man’
Inspired to create something more “positive, friendly and safe”, Matsumoto quit his job as a car salesman and set out on a mission to bring the industry “from the back streets to the high streets”.
Tenga products are designed to look different from the obvious artificial vaginas and vulva, which Matsumoto says objectifies women.
The company’s marketing team describes its goods – including the signature Brite phallic cups, vibrators and other toys – as “artful”.
But despite creative collaborations for products like hipster T-shirts, prejudices remain around the company.
Mei Kamiya, a 26-year-old clerk at the new Tenga Land flagship store in Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku district, said the Tenga Cup is still often misunderstood as catering to “lonely, single men seeking a replacement for women.”
But masturbation is “normal for everyone,” while other Tenga products, such as vibrators, can deepen intimacy between partners, he said.
Japan, like many developed countries, is struggling with low birth rates, which is fueling a looming demographic crisis.
But Matsumoto rejected the suggestion that Tenga products promote sexlessness.
“If anything, I think we are doing the opposite by encouraging a decline in the birth rate in Japan,” he said.
‘less taboo’
Tenga sells sperm monitoring kits for couples seeking to conceive and devices for people suffering from erectile dysfunction.
Some doctors recommend its health care products as “an alternative” to treat sexual disorders, said Mikiya Nakatsuka, a professor of reproductive medicine at Okayama University.
But Japan tends to shy away from sex-related topics, including menstruation and contraception, she told AFP, partly due to conservative school sex education.
Nakatsuka said, “Are we going to see afternoon TV commercials about Tenga soon? I don’t think so.”
Nevertheless, Tenga’s “stylishness and its therapeutic usefulness may help make this type of conversation less taboo”.
Moving forward, Tenga wants to target the country’s aging population, whose needs it says are often overlooked.
The firm’s research found that some older people feel they are “automatically assumed to be too old to have sexual desires”.
Others live with adult children and are financially dependent on them, giving them little privacy.
For women of the older generation, “there was a time when being open or vocal about sex was considered embarrassing or unladylike,” said Matsumoto.
“We tell them it’s a good, healthy thing to do.”
