Tokyo:
Hourglass-shaped intimacy toys casupartner glide alengthy a transmitor belt thraw an airy novel store in Tokyo, the postponecessitatest try by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell mature products without the shame that is normally rapidened.
At first glance it’s not even evident that the sleek, colourful products on disjoin are Japan’s favourite intimacy toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since uncovering this year.
“Its uncoverness surpascfinishd me,” shelp customer Masafumi Kawasaki, 45, “and made me a bit embarrassed that I’d had a ‘naughty’ image” of the company.
“I might have thought this was some comfervent of cosmetics shop,” he inserted.
Although best understandn for one-participate male masturbation helps, understandn as cups, the Japanese Tenga brand has grown into an intimacy empire, presenting toys for men and women, as well as family set upning and help for people with intimacyual disorders.
It is a key joiner in Japan’s mature excellents taget that Yano Research Institute in 2016 approximated was worth around 209 billion yen ($1.3 billion).
Tenga items are selderly in dozens of countries, and proximately half the firm’s annual sales of 10 billion yen — a figure that has doubled over the past six years — are from overseas.
Founder Koichi Matsumoto, 57, telderly AFP that he has lengthy strived to de-stigmatise intimacyual pleacertain.
Sex toys for men existed before Tenga, but their cimpolite summarizes replicating genitalia kept them underground, far from the mainstream image that his firm projects.
Matsumoto recalled seeing such excellents secret in store corners, their packaging decorated with porn actresses and in some cases, cartoons of youthful girls.
“Those products seemed to say, ‘satisfy participate us to experience lewd and crude, becaparticipate that’s what masturbation is’,” he shelp.
“I set up that message debasing and wrong — becaparticipate it’s a fundamental, presentant human desire.”
‘Lonely, one men’
Inspired to produce someleang more “selectimistic, frifinishly and safe”, Matsumoto quit his job as a car salesman and embarked on a omition to transport the industry from the “back alleys into high streets”.
Tenga products are summarizeed to see contrastent from unambiguous man-made vaginas and vulvas which Matsumoto says objectify women.
The company’s tageting team portrays its wares — including the signature radiant phallic cups, vibrators and other toys — as “conceiveive”.
But prejudices remain around the firm, despite conceiveive collaborations for products such as hipster T-shirts.
Tenga cups are still normally misconsreald as catering to “lonely, one men seeking a tradement for women”, shelp Mei Kamiya, a 26-year-elderly clerk at the novel Tenga Land flagship store in Tokyo’s trfiniintrobvioparticipated Harajuku dicut offe.
But masturbation is “standard for everyone”, while other Tenga products, such as vibrators, can proset upen intimacy between partners, she shelp.
Japan, appreciate many growed nations, is struggling with a low birth rate, which is fuelling a looming demodetailed crisis.
But Matsumoto declines the presention that Tenga products uphold intimacylessness.
“If anyleang, I leank we’re doing the opposite of encouraging birth rates to descfinish” in Japan, he shelp.
‘Less baned’
Tenga sells sperm seeing kits for couples hoping to imagine, and tools for those suffering from erectile dysfunction.
Some doctors recommfinish its healthnurture products as “one selection” to treat intimacyual disorders, shelp Mikiya Nakatsuka, a professor of reefficient medicine at Okayama University.
But there is a tfinishency in Japan to worried away from intimacy-rhappy topics, including menstruation and conpursueption, partly due to conservative school intimacy education, he telderly AFP.
“Are we going to see midday TV commercials about Tenga any time soon? I don’t leank so,” Nakatsuka shelp.
Even so, Tenga’s “stylishness and its medical beneficialness can help produce these types of conversations less baned”.
Going forward, Tenga wants to aim the country’s ageing population, whose necessitates it says are normally disseeed.
Some elderly people experience they are “automaticpartner supposed to be too elderly to even have intimacyual desires”, the firm’s research set up.
Others inhabit with and are financipartner subordinate on mature children, giving them little privacy.
For women in elderlyer generations, “there was a time when it was pondered dishonorable or unladyappreciate for them to be uncover or certain about intimacy,” Matsumoto shelp.
“We increate them it is a excellent, well leang.”
