Heung-Wah Wong - The Japanese Adult Video Industry

Unlike many other books on pornography which concentrate on arguments about restricting or not restricting pornography, this book focuses on the production of adult videos. It outlines and examines the industrial dynamics of the industry, its strategies, technological capabilities and organizational structure. It discusses the socialization of those who participate in the industry, the role of censorship, the nature of markets and the wider cultural impact of the industry.

Heung-wah Wong is Program Director of Global Creative Industries in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Hong Kong.

Hoi-yan Yau is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University.

Routledge Culture, Society, Business in East Asia Series

To view more titles in the series, follow this link: www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Culture-Society-Business-in-East-Asia-Series/book-series/CSBEA

Editorial Board:

Heung-wah Wong (Executive Editor), The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Chris Hutton, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Wayne Cristaudo, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Harumi Befu (Emeritus Professor), Stanford University, USA

Shao-dang Yan, Peking University, China

Andrew Stewart MacNaughton, Reitaku University, Japan

William Kelly, Independent Researcher

Keiji Maegawa, Tsukuba University, Japan

Kiyomitsu Yui, Kobe University, Japan

How and what are we to examine if we wish to understand the commonalities across East Asia without falling into the powerful fictions or homogeneities that dress its many constituencies? By the same measure, can East Asian homogeneities make sense in any way outside the biases of East-West personation?

For anthropologists familiar with the societies of East Asia, there is a rich diversity of work that can potentially be applied to address these questions within a comparative tradition grounded in the region as opposed to the singularizing outward encounter. This requires us to broaden our scope of investigation to include all aspects of intra-regional life, trade, ideology, culture and governance, while at the same time dedicating ourselves to a complete and holistic understanding of the exchange of identities that describe each community under investigation. An original and wide-ranging analysis will be the result, one that draws on the methods and theory of anthropology as it deepens our understanding of the interconnections, dependencies and discordances within and among East Asia.

The book series includes three broad strands within and between which to critically examine the various insides and outsides of the region. The first is about the globalization of Japanese popular culture in East Asia, especially in greater China. The second strand presents comparative studies of major social institutions in Japan and China, such as family, community and other major concepts in Japanese and Chinese societies. The final strand puts forward cross-cultural studies of business in East Asia.

Japanese Encounters

The Structure and Dynamics of Cultural Frames

Eyal Ben-Ari

The Japanese Adult Video Industry

Heung-wah Wong and Hoi-yan Yau

Heung-wah Wong and Hoi-yan Yau

First published 2018

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2018 Heung-wah Wong and Hoi-yan Yau

The right of Heung-wah Wong and Hoi-yan Yau to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

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ISBN: 978-0-415-70378-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-76249-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

This is the second volume produced out of a long and difficult journey of our research on Japanese adult videos. It goes without saying that this journey would not have been possible without the help, guidance and assistance from various people. We are very grateful to Professor Eyal Ben-Ari, the well-known expert of Japanese studies, and Professor Emeritus of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University, Israel as well as to Professor Wayne Cristaudo, an all-round philosopher and Professor of Political Science at Charles Darwin University, Australia for reviewing the manuscript in spite of their busy schedules. Both of them made several important suggestions and comments without which this book would not have been possible.

We would also like to express our gratitude to Professor Mark McLelland, Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of Wollongong, Australia, who read the whole manuscript and provided very useful suggestions; and Professor Satoshi Tanahashi, Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Gender/ Sexuality Studies, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan who also agreed to read our manuscript. Special thanks go to Professor Brian Moeran, Professor Emeritus of Business Anthropology at Copenhagen Business School and Honorary Professor of Global Creative Industries, The University of Hong Kong, who not only copyedited the manuscript but also gave us many criticisms and suggestions to make it much better. Also as always, responsibility for any errors remains our own.

One of the authors (Heung-wah Wong) would also like to express his gratitude to the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan which provided him with a comfortable academic environment when he was on sabbatical leave from January 2016 to January 2017 and wrote up most of this manuscript there. Special thanks go to Professor Kenichi Sudo, at that time Director General of the National Museum of Ethnology, who never fails to provide personal and emotional support to Wong.

Our special thanks also go to the publishing house Routledge, in which we have been fortunate to have found a most helpful, proficient and competent publisher; particular thanks go to Peter Sowden.

Finally, we beg forgiveness of all those who have been with us over the course of the years and whose names we cannot, or have failed to, mention.

Every attempt has been made to trace the copyright holders of the illustrations included in this book. We have also done our best to obtain consent forms from those whose portraits appear here. If anyone has any objection to the publication of any of the images in these pages, we ask them to contact us (hoiyanyau@ ln.edu.hk) so that we may rectify matters to their satisfaction.