The Japanese porn industry is in trouble.
While we might spend much of our time on this blog singing its praises, the truth is this has been a bad year, full of accusations of coercion and trafficking of female performers.
We always knew it went on, especially towards the bottom end of the industry. Needless to say, the links between organized crime in Japan and other sections of society, such as big business, politics and mainstream entertainment, are well documented, and the idol and porn scenes are similarly connected.
These are social problems, though. What about financial ones. The porn barons have those, too.
And while the AV industry is constantly at war with pirating and online portals, the changes to the way we consume things have affected the market.
In the last five years, the “adult digital contents market” (which includes both AV releases and eroge, or adult video games) fell by 15% in five years. That’s according to Yano Research, who compared the size of the market in 2010 (over ¥80 billion) with 2014 (just over ¥70 billion).
Less income means less money for production and promotion, which means the already poorly bad minor performers get less (no doubt increasing their shifts spent moonlighting as hostesses and prostitutes) while the big names will be less attracted to enter the industry as the appearance fees become less generous.
What can we do to help? Well, perhaps buy a DVD?
