People of Japan! This is Strange!

An evening with Japan's hottest AV actresses & a roomful of gaijin

A tremendously interesting episode of one of my favorite shows, Nipponjin yo! Koko wa hen! (People of Japan! This is Strange!) was on 11/10/99, and it featured a panel of adult video actresses, directors and others being grilled by foreigners living in Japan. A great show, Nipponjin yo! Koko wa hen! (abbreviated to kokohen most of the time) puts 50 or so Japanese bilingual foreigners from various countries in a room and throws out a topic (racism, high school prostitution, Japanese employment practices, the key money system, etc.) and has the audience of "gaijin" bat the issue around, in Japanese, giving their views -- usually loudly, as you'll see. Often, there are several guests (stewardesses, in the episode about sexual harassment, young "cogals" from Tokyo in another episode about the stereotypes of foreigners and young Japanese gals) to get the conversation going. The host of the show, Beat Takeshi (the guy with bad English in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and Johnny Mneumonic) laughs and wears his funny costume, while famous soccer player Ramoth (from Brazil, but he's got Japanese citizenship now) sits next to him..

The show is very good, on the one hand, because it gives the many foreigners who live in Japan (approx. 1% of Japan's population of 130 million people) a way to have their opinions broadcast to Japanese, and lets Japanese counter those opinions in an open environment (although the foreigners appearing on the show are pre-selected). Unlike the U.S., where a person with an opinion can at least write a letter to the editor of a newspaper and have it printed, there's no way for foreigners who feel frustration at aspects of life in Japan to express themselves to Japanese society. (I even gave a speech in Japanese about how this was my biggest frustration about living in Japan, several years ago -- someone must have heard my prayer.)

On the other hand, the show has some faults. First, they don't really try to represent foreigners as they are, but pick people who are interesting on camera. It's much more interesting to see a big shouting black guy from the Benin Republic in Africa than a cerebral, quiet discussion of, say, postwar relations between Asian nations, especially between Korea and Japan. In Japan, the two largest groups of foreigners by far are from Korea, Brazil and Peru, yet they're not represented that well among the audience. They also have a tendency to choose bold, titillating topics rather than mundane yet important ones.

I actually had a chance to be on the show, not as one of the foreigners giving their opinions, but in the little 10 minute feature that they sometimes run. I was contacted by one of the staff of this show, who wanted permission to film footage of me doing my J-List work, buying stock for J-List, negotiating with suppliers, and so on. I admit that it would be a major ego stroke to be on Japanese TV, but the fact that we have children in school here, and have to keep the fact that we sell adult products away from our neighbors made us refuse the offer.

This episode was about -- the Japanese AV industry, something I know a bit about, running J-List as I do. So I taped it, and took notes, so that I could give fans of Japanese AV a taste of the action. I also rolled up the old Final Cut Pro sleeves and exported some Quicktime movies for your enjoyment (requires Quicktime 4.0 for Mac or Windows).

Featured as guests were three very well-known AV actresses (Wakana Sena, Komuro Yuri and Honjoh Sayuri), two AV directors, and manga-ka Egawa Tatsuya (artist of such steamy and sexual manga as Tokyo University Story and Be Free, as well as one of my favorites, Magical Tall-root).

The attack started off quickly. This woman from Ghana protested the existence of AV completely, saying that she was enough for her (Japanese) boyfriend. The MC countered, saying a) many men can't find sex they need in its usual, fleshy form, and that b) adult videos are often enjoyed by couples before sex.

One of the most salient points was raised by an AV director: that while you can criticize the adult world for some reasons, it's undeniably a strong part of Japanese culture. Japanese culture has always had geisha, and highly erotic ukiyoe sexual artwork (called shunga or "spring pictures"), and the modern Japanese AV industry is just an extension of that great tradition. None of the people on the show were prepared to accept that...

Ms. Wakana Sena looked lovely as she defended her place in the AV world. "Since becoming an AV actress, I've found my dream. I've only performed in adult videos while over the age of 21, and don't think the existence of adult videos is dangerous to society at all."

(If you're wondering why there are Japanese subtitles, by the way, it's to make sure the Japanese viewers will be able to understand what the foreigners, some of whom have strange accents in Japanese, are saying. In English, we're used to a lot of foreign accents, but most Japanese have not heard, say, a Chinese Japanese accident, or a Indonesian Japanese accent, in person...)

One thing about this show: everyone carries their own national bias into the room with them. This man from India stood up and expressed AV in terms of the Kama Sutra.

This guy is from China, and always sees the world from the standpoint of communism and security for his country. In another episode about the Vietnam war, he was expressing how peaceful China was, while the man from India two pictures above was objecting loudly, citing specific examples and dates of India/China border disputes.  

There are two Americans in the group, the guy on the right and a Japanese-American. He took the view that I hold -- that adult videos and related products are natural and healthy, and no one needs to watch it if they don't want to, and that this was part of the normal freedom that everyone should enjoy.

The loud guy from Ghana stood up suddenly and said that America is too free -- so free that people are free to express themselves with violence against blacks, as with the KKK.

After they got done talking about the Japanese AV world, they covered erotic manga, another major subset of contemporary Japanese popular culture. Under fire was Egawa Tatsuya, a long time manga artist who draws sexually themed mainstream manga.

Again, most of the audience had nothing positive to say about erotic manga, despite the fact that no one has to buy it if they don't like it. Several members did show their ignorance of the world of manga by calling Mr. Egawa's work pornography, when in fact it is an extremely deep story about love, growing up and taking on life's challenges, even while it is sexual. (Egawa is a graduate of Tokyo University, the most elite university in the country.) He tried to explain the themes in his work, but sadly, there wasn't one member in the audience who seemed open to them.

(Download a quicktime movie from this show! Click here to download the movie directly)

In this Quicktime clipping, the lovely Honjoh Sayuri states that, as AV actresses, they can have sex or masturbate in front of the camera, feel good, and relieve the sexual stress men feel, causing a reduction in violent crime and rape in Japan. The loud guy from Ghana disagreed, saying that violent crime and rape is a direct result of adult videos. Japan's future is in grave danger, he said, because of the AV world; she countered by saying that men commit some violent crimes when sexual pressure builds up too much, and by giving them a safe outlet for that pressure they were saving Japan. He stated later that there were no adult videos in Ghana because it was a good and moral country. The young man from Congo, who was a little cooler, stood up and said that wasn't true at all, that American and European pornography videos are popular all over Africa.

(Download a quicktime movie from this show! Click here to download the movie directly)

Here, a woman from Italy makes the point that Japanese AV actresses being passive and receptive to sex on camera makes all women look bad, and that she would never want to go back to days when a woman couldn't show her strength. Honjoh Sayuri counters that the passiveness is all acting, that they're really in control of the entire situation all the time, and that they're not playing the victim in any role. A woman from Germany (off camera) tells her she's crazy.

(Download a quicktime movie from this show! Click here to download the movie directly)

Here a man from Germany admits that he's watched a lot of Japanese AV (this brings a laugh) and hasn't seen an actress show a strong will and sense of self-expression, as American and European AV actresses do. Komuro Yuri gets the best of him, by pointing out that, while he says that people who watch AV that features violence should be ashamed of themselves, he himself is in the same position, since he watches the same videos, too.

(Download a quicktime movie from this show! Click here to download the movie directly)

In this clip, the lovely Wakana Sena is under attack by Zomahon, the most famous (and loudest) of all the foreigners on this show (he's been in several commercials). She tells him that she's found her dream, and is happier doing AV than at any other time in her life. She is foolish, Zomahon says, and she's in great danger doing what she's doing. She knows nothing about life, she's stupid and young, so shut up! he shouts. (He's usually much louder than this -- he had a headache and a fever during this episode.) Incidentally, Kaori hates this big buffoon, and refuses to watch this show because of him. He is, though, a good man, who works hard to promote understanding between Japanese and his small country, and he's also collecting money to start a Japanese language school in his hometown.

The fact that this show exists at all shows an interesting aspect of the Japanese kokuminsei or "national personality" -- that is, they are very interested in hearing what gaijin ("outside people") think of their social progress. Books that attempt to explain Japanese social and business practices sell very well here, and the opinions of people like Peter Drucker about Japan are avidly read here. You could characterize much of what Japan has done since the 1868 Meiji Restoration in terms of trying to get the large nations of Europe, and the U.S., to recognize Japan as a full, modern nation. Currently, Narita Airport is being massively rebuilt, mainly so that when the World Cup arrives in 2002, all the foreigners who arrive will be impressed. If I want to go to Nagano, I can do so on a nice new freeway, which was built mainly for the convenience of foreigners who came for the Olympics here.

Imagine a TV show where they take people from Germany, Saudi Arabia, China, Australia, Italy, and so on, and let them sit around and tell us what's right or wrong with our country. It wouldn't fly in the U.S., and it wouldn't fly in any other country, either. But as some journalist said, "Japan is the only country that gives a damn what the foreign community thinks." Interesting...