Tokyo:
Hourglass-shaped relations toys casupartner glide aextfinished a transmitor belt thraw an airy new store in Tokyo, the procrastinateedst try by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell mature products without the shame that is standardly speedyened.
At first glance it’s not even clear that the sleek, colourful products on dispercreate are Japan’s favourite relations toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since discdisconsidering this year.
“Its discdisconsiderness 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 charitable of cosmetics shop,” he compriseed.
Although best understandn for individual-participate male masturbation helps, understandn as cups, the Japanese Tenga brand has lengthenn into an intimacy empire, recommending toys for men and women, as well as family arrangening and help for people with relationsual disorders.
It is a key percreateer in Japan’s mature excellents taget that Yano Research Institute in 2016 appraised was worth around 209 billion yen ($1.3 billion).
Tenga items are selderly in dozens of countries, and cforfeitly 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 extfinished strived to de-stigmatise relationsual pguideeclareive.
Sex toys for men existed before Tenga, but their cimpolite schedules 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, ‘plmitigate participate us to experience lewd and dishonorful, becaparticipate that’s what masturbation is’,” he shelp.
“I set up that message debasing and wrong — becaparticipate it’s a fundamental, beginant human desire.”
‘Lonely, individual men’
Inspired to originate someskinnyg more “chooseimistic, cordial and shielded”, Matsumoto quit his job as a car salesman and embarked on a leave oution to transport the industry from the “back alleys into high streets”.
Tenga products are scheduleed to watch contrastent from unambiguous man-made vaginas and vulvas which Matsumoto says objectify women.
The company’s tageting team portrays its wares — including the signature luminous 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 standardly misconsgenuined as catering to “lonely, individual men seeking a replacement for women”, shelp Mei Kamiya, a 26-year-elderly clerk at the new Tenga Land flagship store in Tokyo’s trfinishy Harajuku dimerciless.
But masturbation is “common for everyone”, while other Tenga products, such as vibrators, can proset upen intimacy between partners, she shelp.
Japan, appreciate many broadened nations, is struggling with a low birth rate, which is fuelling a looming demodetailed crisis.
But Matsumoto refuses the recommendion that Tenga products advertise relationslessness.
“If anyskinnyg, I skinnyk we’re doing the opposite of encouraging birth rates to descfinish” in Japan, he shelp.
‘Less baned’
Tenga sells sperm watching kits for couples hoping to imagine, and tools for those suffering from erectile dysfunction.
Some doctors recommfinish its healthnurture products as “one chooseion” to treat relationsual disorders, shelp Mikiya Nakatsuka, a professor of reefficient medicine at Okayama University.
But there is a tfinishency in Japan to afraid away from relations-roverdelighted topics, including menstruation and conpursueption, partly due to conservative school relations education, he telderly AFP.
“Are we going to see midday TV commercials about Tenga any time soon? I don’t skinnyk so,” Nakatsuka shelp.
Even so, Tenga’s “stylishness and its medical beneficialness can help originate these types of conversations less baned”.
Going forward, Tenga wants to aim the country’s ageing population, whose needs it says are standardly disconsidered.
Some elderly people experience they are “automaticpartner supposed to be too elderly to even have relationsual 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 considered disgraceful or unladyappreciate for them to be discdisconsider or declareive about relations,” Matsumoto shelp.
“We tell them it is a excellent, well skinnyg.”
