The Japanese market of sex toys for men is an impressive array of human substitutes, most of which either appear to be sleepy or sleeping. Fully 30% to 50% of online catalogues feature such offerings, and new products are being released at a dizzying rate.
Browsing the sites, it is notable how many Japanese sex toys play on the notion of unconsciousness. Eyes closed, cut off from the real world by sleep, these dolls invite their human companions to follow them into a fantasy dreamworld.
This strange invitation is the subject of my latest paper, published this spring in the French anthropology journal Terrain.
Love surrogates
The association of desire and sleep seems paradoxical. In trying to understand this market, I first looked at the physical shapes of these objects and the language that manufacturers and retailers use to describe them.
The company Dekunobô (木偶の坊), a leader in the “flesh pillow” sector, was founded in 2002 by Nobuyuki Kikuchi (菊地信行).
Starting then and continuing today, these sex toys – that is, dolls or body parts used for masturbation – are replicas of young women, sometimes pared down to the most basic female contours: a bolster cushion, for instance, or a vaguely human-like inflatable mattress.
These “bodies” come with interchangeable coverings and parts, from adjustable heads…
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