Hihokan, literally "palaces of hidden treasures," are tacky sex museums that once dotted the Japanese landscape, but their image has taken a bit of a blow in recent years, prompting a philosophy student to make sure their heritage is preserved, according to Cyzo (December).

Ryohei Sasatani, the philosophy student from posh Doshisha University in the ancient capital of Kyoto, produced the self-funded tribute flick to the sex museums with "Showa Seichi Junrei Hihokan no Tainai (A Pilgrimage Around the Hallowed Places of the Showa Era <1925-1989>: Inside the Womb of the Palaces of Hidden Treasures)."

"Hihokan contain realistic expressions of the surface of Japanese sexuality. And they have continued to be of interest today, in the reign of the Heisei Emperor (Emperor Akihito) even though they are symbolic of the Showa Era (the reign of Emperor Hirohito from 1925 to 1989). They are the only thing for me," the philosophy student cum filmmaker tells Cyzo. "Hihokan call out to me. So that's why I came up with the idea of making a film about them."

Sasatani says the first hihokan he ever visited was in the one-time honeymooner haven of Atami, in Shizuoka Prefecture, where he entered the building and was greeted by a statue of a giant tortoise, only the head had been substituted with a massive male organ.

"I thought to myself, 'Wow, there really are places like this.' It was like being in some kind of mysterious world," he says.

Sasatani says few Japanese nowadays visit the hihokan and he made his movie because he wants more people to be aware of the charms they have.

"Places like hihokan are now written off by many as being indecent, but I want to pass on to people the message that these joints were once a really major tourist industry," he says.

Sasatani says the hihokan can play an important role in stimulating the minds of young men today. He elaborates his argument based on what he saw at the Ganso Kokusai Hihokan, arguably Japan's oldest palace of hidden treasures, in Ise, Mie Prefecture, which is filled with all sorts of dioramas, many of them with animals mating or statues of male genitals.

"Hihokan displays are designed to stimulate the sexual imaginations of those who see them. For someone of the generation brought up learning about sex through adult videos, like myself, these dioramas of mating animals were something really novel, just like the statues of reproductive organs and the pictures of reproductive scenes." Sasatani tells Cyzo. "I'd really like all the adult video generation to learn about the hihokan. I wonder whether everybody in this generation is lacking a bit of imagination. I wonder whether my generation is getting what it really needs to be able to make the right decisions. These are the sorts of issues I want to deal with by posing them as questions to viewers through my DVD." (By Ryann Connell)