Sex-cessfully surviving in the Japanese jizz biz

By Ryann Connell
November 23, 2004

Plenty of indicators exist to determine what makes a hit product, like, say a movie grossing 100 million dollars or a book selling 1 million copies. Japan's netherworld, Spa! notes, has its own benchmarks, too, even after taking the double punched dealt by the economy's Lost Decade and an increasingly belligerent police force.

"There are slight differences according to location and the type of service offered, and I'd say overall the standard has probably dropped by 20 to 30 percent in the past few years. A hit now would probably only need to rake in half the customers it would have taken compared to the heady days of the bubble era," says Masayuki Ogino, editor in chief of Manzoku magazine, a rag that follows the comings and, well, comings of Japan's flesh trade. "Looking for an example at a soapland brothel in (Tokyo's pleasure district) Yoshiwara, you'd regard a hit as a place with eight rooms operating for 12 hours daily and charging at least 50,000 yen that could attract a minimum of 25 customers a day."

Considering this works out to about three customers per room per day, the money to be made in the business of satisfying desires nowadays isn't as desirable as it once was.

Ogino says the key to sex-cessfully surviving in the jizz biz is showing flexibility.

"When hand jobs are popular in adult movies, you see an increase in the number of businesses offering hand jobs. When (mostly teen girl group) Morning Musume was popular, businesses catered to the trend by employing younger women who looked like girls. In short, you keep ahead of the pack by keeping up with the times," Ogino tells Spa! "Places capable of adjusting to the various demands of people's tastes are the ones that become strongest."

Like sex services, the benchmark for a hit adult video has also loosened in the Noughties.

"Only a few years ago, we'd get five or six movies a year sell more than 10,000 copies, but now we're lucky to get one or two," a spokesman from stick flick maker Momotaro Eizo tells Spa! "We see the decline in a broadening of people's tastes and the sheer number of makers who've appeared on the scene putting out an enormous number of works onto the market."

Stores selling adult aids may be having less of a tough time producing hits than other parts of the netherworld as they become more accessible to female customers.

"We've got five large-scale stores in Tokyo and the best-selling product at all of them is the 'Womanhole' (a hand-held male masturbation aid shaped like female genitalia). It makes up 18 percent of our overall sales and in Akihabara alone we sell 7,000 a month," Toshihiko Sasaki, the owner of the Adult Convenience Store Akihabara Branch tells Spa! "Mini-vibrators are next with sales of 3,000 a month, followed by vibrators with 1,500. Just for our shop alone, we'd say we've got a huge hit if a Womanhole sells 1,000 units a month, a mini-vibrator movies 80 units and a vibrator 50 units. For other, more expensive products, the benchmark in terms of units sold is lowered. For example, the precision-crafted, life-sized love doll that costs about 160,000 yen is a hit if we sell two of them a month. Our most popular item is a love doll made in the likeness of a little girl. Everybody who buys them says they only want them for display, but who knows what they really do with them."

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