A smelly problem
Diet-caused intimate odor in women puts off oral sex among Japanese. Mainichi Shimbun.
Jun 20, 2005

Japan is beset by a tongue-twisting turmoil that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with excess alliteration, according to Shukan Taishu, a men's weekly.

It seems there is not only a growing number of men who are reluctant to let loose with oral ministrations of their female partners, but large numbers of women who don't want it anyway, publication claims.

"I'm sure there are more women who don't want cunnilingus," a 23-year-old cabaret club hostess we'll call Naomi tells Shukan Taishu.

"It's not the guys' fault. I'd say it's more a problem caused by the women. At a guess, I'd say the reluctance stems from this belief that they smell bad down there, which is why they don't want anybody doing it and don't like anybody else being there in the first place.

"I know lots of girls just around me who are really worried about the reek."

Naomi continues: "Keep this a secret from the guys, but there're a lot of girls who believe eating dried squid makes you smell down there.

"Some girls won't eat it at all. Others girls have complained that eating sushi or sashimi has made them smell like raw fish."

Indeed, a wide variety of foodstuffs have been blamed for creating odious odors in the netherworld, including garlic, shallots, raw flesh, even apple tea if it's gulped down too fast, not to mention smoking foreign cigarettes.

Other urban legends are also contributing to the belief that feeding and other habits alter fragrance.

Frowned upon are drug use, excessive masturbation and other unmentionables are also blamed. There is many a young miss who believes these myths.

"Once I made too much curry and all I ate for two or three days was curry. I started to smell like curry," a young part-time worker says. "Women get really worried about what their privates smell like."

These concerns have helped create a growing market for deodorants.

One firm, which the men's weekly refers to only as Company D and describes as a manufacturer of women's sanitary products, is apparently making a killing out of items such as herbal soaps or health products that promise to make pudenda smell pretty.

"We put an ad in a women's magazine promising 50 percent off our 5-pack herbal soaps that normally cost 24,000 yen and we sold over 500 packs within a week," a spokesman for Company D tells Shukan Taishu.

"There are lots of women out there who are really worried about how they smell."

Hideo Yamanaka, head of the Toranomon Hibiya Clinic in Tokyo, has little doubt more Japanese women have putrid privates.

"When the venereal disease called trichomoniasis breaks out, it creates a foul odor akin to dried squid. There was a study that showed about 10 percent of women have come down with trichomoniasis," Yamanaka tells Shukan Taishu.

"Many young women nowadays also like wearing really tight jeans, which warms up the genitals and creates humidity between the legs and also provides an ideal breeding environment for disease antibodies to breed."

Yamanaka argues that thrush also contributes toward skanky smells. Thrush is caused by an excess of a mold everybody has called candidiasis.

Normally, the body's lactic acid bacillus will keep candidiasis levels under control, but recent environments have made it hard for this cleanser to work.

"Lactic acid bacilli don't work as well if somebody is on the Pill, or taking antibiotics, or going through a lot of stress," gynecologist Yamanaka tells Shukan Taishu.

"Recently, women fastidious about personal hygiene have started using bidets to wash their vaginas because they think they're dirty.

"But the only real effect this has is to wash away the lactic acid bacilli and allow the thrush-causing candidiasis to thrive, making the genitals smell even worse."
Mainichi Shimbun