Another week, another sex-themed article about Japan gets written and hawked around.
AFP has written an article about Japan’s “silver porn” industry and the wire service has sold it to countless other publications around the world.
We’ve seen these pieces before, such as in The Guardian.
And of course, it’s hardly news.
There has been a vibrant silver porn for a long time, featuring a host of stars like Yumi Kazama and Shigeo Tokuda. And it’s not just performers: the over-sixty crowd is very active in watching porn, frequenting love hotels, and also visiting soaplands and prostitutes (young and old).
The AFP article focuses on a new star, Yasue Tomita.
Dressed in a kimono and kneeling silently on a tatami mat floor, 61-year-old Yasue Tomita looks as if she might be about to perform a Japanese tea ceremony — instead she’s debuting as a porn actress.
Fluttering her eyelashes demurely as the cameras prepare to roll, Tomita is proof that in Japan’s greying society you’re never too old to chase your dreams, however racy or unorthodox.
She has also become part of a flourishing niche market in Japan: “silver porn” — stretching the limits of eroticism among the elderly and overturning social norms in a country where people are expected to grow old gracefully.
A friend of mine with quite a lot of experience with scarlet ladies once told me the young ones were best for screwing while the older ones knew how to give the best head.
Tomita is also a little worried about her physical abilities.
Tomita confessed to being “a bit rusty” but made no apologies for her rambunctious lust for life, or her decision to put aside her knitting and crochet and launch into a career making X-rated movies.
“I like my handicrafts but I wanted to try my hand at this, while my body still works,” she told AFP before filming began.
“I do like sex, and this is my last chance before I get too old. I’m very nervous. I wonder if I should really do it, especially in front of so many people, but everyone should follow their dream.
“I just hope I can keep up,” added Tomita, who used to work in a factory manufacturing car parts and registered for an agency in Japan’s booming “adult video” (AV) industry with her daughter.
“We applied through the Internet together. I got offered a job first, which surprised her a bit.”
Of course, the writers bring in Shigeo Tokuda as the “pioneer” of the genre.
In ageing Japan, around 32 million people — a quarter of the population — are 65 or over. Thanks to a low birthrate and growing longevity, that proportion is expected to rise to 40 percent by 2060.
With statistics like that, it’s no surprise that geronto-porn is big business.
Adult movies rake in about $20 billion a year, and those featuring unashamedly wrinkly men and women account for between 20 and 30 percent of that market, industry insiders say. Sales have rocketed over the past decade as more of Japan’s perky seniors celebrate their mojo.
Though not for the faint-hearted, the genre took off thanks largely to now-80-year-old Shigeo Tokuda, the twinkle-toed king of granddad porn, who has peeled off for hundreds of hardcore flicks with titles such as “Forbidden Elderly Care” and “Manic Training of Lolitas.”
Thank you, Tokuda-san!
