Japanese Authority's Clean up Hits Sexual Cabaret Club

Ryann Connell
One of the most daring adult clubs in Osaka's Minami entertainment district has been shut down in what many say is the first strike in a campaign to clean up the area, according to Shukan Jitsuwa.

Six of the hostesses and a male customer of the "sexual cabaret club" Impulse were arrested last month for indecent exposure after the workers allegedly labored while entirely nude and the patron exposed his genitals.

Those alleged acts aren't the only indecency that appears to have gone on at Impulse.

"As soon as you enter the club, a hostess will give you a hot towel that she has already used to swipe her private parts. You can start fondling the hostesses' breasts as soon as you sit down, but that's nothing. You immediately get a drink, but it's a hostess's urine served on the rocks. They also serve tidbits sprinkled with cuttings of the workers' pubic hair," the employee of an adult entertainment introduction service tells Shukan Jitsuwa. "They also had a service where the ice served in drinks is first inserted into the hostess's private parts. They just kept on getting wilder and wilder and I think they went too far in the end."

Impulse strictly forbid the media from covering it, but word of the club's existence spread quickly and it was among the most popular establishments in Minami. Some say the arrests at Impulse signal the start of a clean-up of the entertainment district.

"That place was warned plenty of times in the past for going too far," a writer on the sex industry says. "I knew there'd eventually be arrests there some day."

Others defend Impulse, though.

"Sure, it stretched the limits, but it never really went beyond them. It didn't provide any sexual services that resulted in ejaculation and if there was any nudity going on, it was never anything more than a quick flash," the operator of a call girl service says. "Even its most raunchy stuff wasn't that serious. I think the arrests have been made to send a message to others."

Reporters covering the Osaka Prefectural Police beat certainly think so.

"Some people are saying the tough line cops are taking on adult businesses in Minami will only go on until the end of this year. But I think they're wrong. I think this crackdown is going to keep on going for ages," a hack covering the Osaka police beat tells Shukan Jitsuwa. "And the reason why I feel that is the cops working on Minami now are the same ones who carried out the massive clean-up a couple of years ago of the Kabukicho district in Tokyo."

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Japan's Raunchiest Entertainment Industry Staggering?

Japan's biggest, brashest, raunchiest entertainment district -- suffered a slow, boring entrance to 2008, with one notable exception: love hotels, Shukan Shincho says.

"It's really sad," a Kabukicho restaurant employee tells Shukan Shincho. "There wasn't a soul around on New Year's Day. About the only places in Kabukicho that attracted anyone over the New Year holidays were game centers and pachinko parlors."

Rumors have recently sprung up that Japan's once-spurting "ejaculation industry" is well and truly on the wane.

"Ever since (Shintaro) Ishihara became governor of Tokyo, policing of Kabukicho has become really tight. The number of storefront sex business there has dropped dramatically and now there are only loads of stores selling adult DVDs or booths offering advice on sex services in their place," the restaurant worker says. "The whole atmosphere of the district has changed and virtually no-one comes here for sex anymore."

Once a Kabukicho staple, soapland brothels in particular are feeling washed up.

"A whole series of famous ramen noodle restaurants have opened up in one alley near all the soaplands," a Kabukicho insider tells the weekly. "People line up to get into the restaurants, which makes it a bit too embarrassing for guys to have to walk past them all to go into the brothels."

Still, not every business in Kabukicho is hurting. In fact, while not as many people may be paying for Kabukicho's carnal pleasures, that doesn't mean they're not getting them in the district.

"(Love hotels) have gone from being just places where you'd go for sex into becoming havens of pleasure. Competition among the hotels is absolutely fierce and consumers get the benefit. That's not just in things like reasonable rates and longer sessions, but services like room service menus with over 100 items and orders accepted 24 hours a day, surround-sound audio systems in the rooms, online karaoke sets and then free provision of toiletries and other items for stays like pajamas. There are even some love hotels with meals prepared by famous chefs," the Kabukicho insider tells Shukan Shincho.

"Some Kabukicho love hotels have started putting up sandwich boards in front of their establishments to advertise the services they're providing. Some couples even spent the entire New Year period in Kabukicho love hotels."

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Japanese Authorities Okays The Sexual Abuse Of 18-20 Year Olds

Ryann Connell
Not long after she had finished elementary school, the father of a now 18-year-old woman identifies only as Miss A began "visiting" her bedroom and sexually abusing her.

His unwanted ministrations continued for years. She graduated high school in the spring of last year but failed to gain entrance into a university, so stayed at home to study.

"He stopped coming in for a while, but then started all over again," Miss A tells Yomiuri Weekly journalist and confidante Miho Nagata.

When the teen's mother was due to go away for a weekend, she was terrified that her father would be able to do as he liked with her, so Nagata stepped in to try and help. But after the journalist dragged the girl away from her incestuous father's clutches, she was horrified to discover Japan's support system places the young woman in limbo -- simply because she's aged 18.

Japanese are legally minors until turning 20, until which time their parents have the legal right and obligation to supervise and educate them. However, laws aimed at protecting children from abusive parents only apply to those under 18. Despite the years of her father's abuse, the Tokyo Child Consultation Center refused to help her.

"If she's 18, her case can't be picked up by one of our centers," the Yomiuri Weekly quotes a spokesman saying.

Other public authorities were equally unhelpful.

"If she really was being abused, why did she wait until she was 18 until telling someone?" the weekly quotes the ever-helpful police from the country area where Miss A grew up as saying.

Public health authorities in the same city expressed similar doubts about her situation. Women's shelter officials in Tokyo were equally unresponsive, saying they generally dealt only with female victims of physical rather than sexual violence.

"It would be the first time we've ever had to deal with a case where a woman was being sexually abused by a member of her family," the weekly quotes a shelter employee saying.

Miss A's age even worked against her when it came to seeking mental health care for the anguish she had suffered.

"If she's under 20, we can't admit her to the hospital without her parents' permission," a spokesman for a mental health hospital says.

Parental permission was highly unlikely to be forthcoming considering the circumstances surrounding Miss A's case, and the fact that her mother and father were constantly ringing or mailing her and demanding she return home. The police also came after her when her parents filed a missing person's report and demanded she be returned to their side.

Eventually, Miss A sought refuge in a place the Japanese call a Woman's Dormitory. These places were initially set up in the 1950s to house and rehabilitate prostitutes after Japan outlawed prostitution. Many of the current residents are also the original inhabitants, and teenage Miss A struggled to live in the communal dorms with the old women.

After most authorities told her they were unable to deal with her case, one welfare worker helpfully suggested to Miss A that she could always go and live in an Internet caf?, the current favorite refuge of many financially strapped Japanese. Police, however, advised the teen to return to the home of the parents who had prompted her to seek sanctuary in the first place.

In the end, Miss A -- shocking those who had tried to help her -- did, in fact, go back to her home. Experts on abuse say it's a common pattern among victims. They also say it's common for many sexually abused children to stay silent about their ordeal until turning 18 and sliding into limbo in Japan.

"We often hear of cases where the victim has actually waited until turning 18 before they tell anyone what has been happening to them," Yuko Taniga, head of Kirara -- an NPO that helps sex abuse victims -- tells Yomiuri Weekly. "Unlike neglect or physical violence, it's very hard for incest victims to tell others about the abuse they've been subjected to. For many victims, incest starts before they know what sex is about, and they can think the same thing happens in every family. There are some incest victims who so enjoy the pleasure of sex that they can't turn it down, even if a relative is forcing it on them. The shame of gaining sexual pleasure makes it all the harder to talk about. There are more than a few minors over 18 who suffer in this way because the Child Welfare Law can't protect them."

Changes to the law in 2004 do allow abused children over 18 but under 20 to apply to a family court to have their parents' guardianship over them declared void. However, it's a step few youngsters are willing to take.

"Even if they are abusive, for children parents are still parents," Kirara's Taniga says. "There are hardly any children who would sue to have their parent's guardianship over them removed."

That leaves few options for youngsters like Miss A who are being abused but are too old to seek refuge through child protection services and too young to be legally treated as adults."Abuse victims with nowhere to go are often forced into sex businesses if they're female, or homelessness if they're male, Tetsuro Tsuzaki, a professor at Hanazono University in Kyoto tells Yomiuri Weekly. "Laws should at least be changed so that children's homes can help people until they turn 20."

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Japanese Women Bust Out, Getting Curvier

Amy Chozick

All over Japan, retailers are scrambling to keep up with a new look known as "bon-kyu-bon." It means "big-small-big" and it signals a change in the way Japanese women look: they're getting curvier.

Japanese stores that used to keep just two or three sizes of clothing on hand are rushing to stock larger sizes. Juicy Couture, known for its figure-hugging terrycloth tracksuits, opened one of its biggest stores in Tokyo last year. And Tokyo's high-end Isetan department store, which used to relegate its bigger sizes to one corner, now prominently features larger items from designers such as Ralph Lauren, Diane von Furstenberg and DKNY.

Wacoal Corp., Japan's largest lingerie company, was once known for its super-padded brassieres. Now the company has a new best-seller: the "Love Bra," a cleavage-boosting creation with less padding, aimed at curvier women in their 20s.

Today, the average Japanese woman's hips, at 35 inches, are around an inch wider than those of women a generation older. Women in their 20s wear a bra at least two sizes larger than that of their mothers, according to Wacoal. Waist size, meanwhile, has gotten slightly smaller, accentuating many young women's curves.

The average 20-year-old is also nearly three inches taller than she was in 1950, according to government statistics, and the average foot has grown by nearly a quarter of an inch.

The physical changes are largely the result of an increasingly Westernized diet, say nutritionists. Meals that used to consist of mostly fish, vegetables and tofu now lean heavily toward an American-style menu of red meat, dairy and indulgences such as Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Cold Stone Creamery ice cream.

All this extra protein and calcium has led to longer, stronger and fuller bodies. Shinichi Tashiro, an endocrinology professor at Showa Pharmaceutical University, says the intake of extra fat tends to go to either breasts or hips in adolescent girls.

Marketers say they first started noticing more women with hourglass figures a few years ago. One of the first people to act on the change was apparel wholesaler Kazuya Kito.

In 2001, Kito founded Egoist, a trendy purveyor of slinky clothing designed to highlight the busty look, figuring that the curvier bodies would make women want to wear less-modest outfits. His fashion industry friends scoffed at the idea. Back then, micro-mini skirts were in style but women, for the most part, kept their chests covered. Yet Egoist, whose wares include see-through sweaters made to show off decorative bras or skinny tube tops, became a huge hit and a catalyst for other skimpy-clothing brands.

Pop artist Kumi Koda in 'barely there' lingerie ads
Pop artist Kumi Koda in 'barely there' lingerie ads
Nami Sakamoto, an advertising-agency employee, embodies the new look. The 26-year-old is tall - by Japanese standards - at 5 feet 5 inches. She's also voluptuous, with a 35-inch bust and 35-inch hips.

"I had a hard time finding button-down shirts that would close," says Sakamoto, especially when she was in high school and there were fewer foreign retailers in Japan that actually sold bigger sizes.

"Sometimes the buttons would burst off." Now she buys clothes at Western retailers that carry larger sizes.

Other young women are buying special items to flaunt their new physique. "It's just more fun to show some skin," says Ayami Arii, a 19-year-old vocational school student, who recently sported a tiny denim mini skirt and an iridescent push-up bra that peeks out from below her low-cut blouse. Her bra, a big seller at boutiques in Tokyo's Shibuya 109 department store, is called a "Showy Bra." Similar to a string bikini top, the $60 bras, made to be peeking out of a low-cut blouse, started appearing last year and come in a variety of colours, from red patent leather to leopard print and orange sequins.

The cleavage craze took off in 2003, when a young pop star named Kumi Koda appeared in ads around Tokyo wearing a barely-there metallic bra and not much else. In one image, she wore coconut shells over her chest. Then, two years later, she performed at the televised Japan Record Awards wearing thin tape-like gold satin straps over her breasts that revealed nearly everything when she danced. The 24-year-old star has become the champion of a new "If you've got it, flaunt it" attitude among young Japanese women.

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Chinese Turn To Japanese For Online Porn

Justin Mitchell

Much ado has been made over China's constant efforts to protect its citizens from the nefarious influence of free flowing Internet information. Falun Gong, Wikipedia, Reporters Without Borders, BBC News, any reference to June 4, 1989, Taiwan independence or a free Tibet are no-nos, of course. Selected blog sites, such as the popular Blogspot, also are often blocked but then unblocked and blocked again in an unpredictable cycle that defies logic.

Lured by all those eyeballs, western companies have enabled the crackdown in their desire to get a share of the rapidly expanding China market. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems were widely criticized in 2005 for their complicity in what the conservative American pundit David Kopel called, "China's stranglehold on information." Although, complicit or not, the overwhelming mass of Chinese Internet users continue to favor the country's leading search engine, Baidu - not Yahoo or Google - for their online needs.

But to be honest, it's not the real low-down on Tiananmen Square, updates on imprisoned intellectuals or the aspirations of the people of Tibet that lead to yearning for a breach in the Great Firewall.

It's porn. Pure and simple. The quest for online porn satisfies the same itch in Beijing as it does in Boston, Manchester or Melbourne. In China, though, finding it online it isn't as simple as typing in "Jenna Jameson," "Bang Bus" or "Japanese Race Queens." Official scrutiny of naughty net sites is arguably more focused than that of content championed by western democracy advocates, though access to pirated Korean, Taiwanese, Japanese, vintage American and European porn on DVD is usually as easy as a running to the corner shop for a couple bottles of Tsing Tao and some sesame chips.

Quietly, however, in mid-March Baidu, the monster NASDAQ-listed portal, did a favor for China's smut seekers when it launched a US$15 million Japanese version called Baidu.jp. With its server based in Japan, it allows users from China to access pages otherwise banned by Beijing - images included. "It's just a test version at an early stage, so we don't want to make a fuss about it in the press," Baidu spokesman Xu Jiye, told Shanghai Daily.

I know what you're looking forOn its corporate Website, Baidu explains the company's mission in lofty terms. "Baidu was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles," the company says. "Hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood."

For those who have found the Japanese site, and the numbers appear to be growing, Baidu has revealed what they want to see. Baidu.jp placed 908th in terms of overall traffic in Japan last week, according to the ranking site Alexa.com. But nearly 60 percent of those searching were from China. Despite friction over still-festering World War II issues such as the Nanjing Massacre, sex slaves, the Yasukuni War Shrine and unexploded chemical weapons, Chinese Internet users have put aside any antipathy. They like what they're seeing: Japanese adult video stars in their mostly R-rated glory

Here's what a few bloggers had to say shortly after Baidu.jp's modest debut:

Someone calling himself Lu Xinxin trumpeted the announcement at www.lvxinxin.com: "Baidu Japan is good stuff! (Girls, don't click, neither should anyone under 18!)"

"Baidu Japan is finally online! Liu Xinxin said it's good stuff. It is, it is! All the search results pop up easily!"

"Is this legal in Japan?" wrote "Kereal" in seeming astonishment.

"I'm sweating!" confessed "Aether."

"You can put in a few words and come up with this astonishing stuff," wrote an anonymous poster. "You can tell how good it is by noticing how the female comrades here react to it. It is really very good, but nothing stunning for other countries, especially Japan which has a large, specialized pornography industry. Still this is huge for China!"

"I hope now Baidu.jp can develop a video search engine," wrote "Ivxnxn."

There were words of caution, too. "You're a bunch of idiots!" scolded "Gdgfd." "After you talk about it here it will probably be banned by the GFW (Great Fire Wall)."

You can also find banned politics on Baidu JapanRest easy, Gdgfd. Official oversight is capricious. For example, how does one explain China's official state news agency Xinhua, and its frequent postings of partially clad females - Chinese and foreign models and actresses alike - on its website under the guise of "art" or "culture," sometimes on the same page as a dictum/news release from the Party about the dangers of online titillation? Xinhua's predilection for saucy pics led one of China's leading foreign bloggers, Jeremy Goldkorn at Danwei.org, to dub it "Skinhua." The nickname has stuck.

It's not all T&A, though, At Baidu.jp. Type in "6./4/89," "Tianamen 89" or variations of them in Chinese characters and the results roll in, albeit in Japanese and many appear to be academic or government documents related to the massacre. Included among the results, though, are graphic, bloody photographs not easily found even on western websites as well as a skillfully edited YouTube tribute that uses documentary footage, still photos and a banned-in-China song urging the world not to forget.

As for Baidu.jp's future in Japan, porn and politically sensitive topics aside, it faces substantial challenges. Yahoo Japan is the country's top pick, with about 86 percent of Japan's Internet users, according to JapanNet. The current version of Baidu.jp has no advertising and offers nothing more than a search engine minus its popular Baidu blogging service and news.

In vaguely addressing the issue, Baidu's chairman and CEO said in a press release that 'We believe that our proven strength in non-English language search, the high internet penetration in Japan, as well as similarities between the Chinese and Japanese languages make this market an ideal next step for Baidu.''

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Rape: Japanese Weapon Of War

Hiroko Tabuchi

Yasuji Kaneko, a foot soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, speaks at his home in Tokyo about countless women he raped in China as a soldier.
Yasuji Kaneko, 87, still remembers the screams of the countless women he raped in China as a foot soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II.
Some were teenagers from the Korean Peninsula serving as sex slaves in military-run brothels. Others were women in villages he and his comrades pillaged as they battled in eastern China.

"They cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died," Kaneko said in an interview at his Tokyo home. "We were the Emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance."

Japan's forced prostitution of some 200,000 women in military brothels in the 1930s and '40s has long constituted one of the most horrifying chapters of its wartime rampage across Asia. The top government spokesman was finally forced to acknowledge wrongdoing in 1993.

Now the government is questioning whether the apology was needed.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday publicly denied women were forced into the military brothels in conquered lands, boosting renewed efforts by rightwing politicians who claim the women involved were professional prostitutes rather than victims of abuse.

"There was no evidence to prove there was coercion as initially suggested," Abe told reporters. "That largely changes what constitutes the definition of coercion, and we have to take it from there."

The debate is heating up just as a private fund set up to compensate some of the victims is about to expire at the end of March amid accusations it was only a cover for the government to avoid taking responsibility. The government has rejected most compensation claims, saying they were settled by postwar treaties.

Victims are outraged and are pressing ahead with their demands for a full government apology rather than the 1993 statement of remorse by a spokesman.

"The Japanese government must not run from its responsibilities," said Lee Yong Soo, 78, who said she was taken as a 14-year-old from Daegu, Korea, by Japanese soldiers in 1944 to work as a sex slave in Taiwan. "I want them to apologize. To admit that they took me away, when I was a little girl, to be a sex slave. To admit that history."

The issue is not limited to Japan. Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings on a resolution that urges the government of Japan to "apologize for and acknowledge" the military's use of sex slaves during the war.

The sex slaves issue has also sparked tensions between Japan and its neighbors, who accuse Tokyo of trying to whitewash wartime atrocities.

Historians say that up to 200,000 women, mainly from the Korean Peninsula and China, were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers in military brothels as so-called "comfort women." Many more were raped at gunpoint as Tokyo's troops rampaged through the region.

After decades of denial, incriminating defense documents discovered in 1992 forced the government to acknowledge that the military government ran brothels populated by women forcibly taken from their homes, and to offer an apology the following year.

The Asian Women's Fund, created in 1995 by the government but independently run and funded by private donations, has provided a way for Japan to compensate former sex slaves without offering official government payments.

Many women have rejected the fund, calling for a direct government apology -- approved by the Diet -- and compensation funded directly by Tokyo.

For rightists, however, Japan's apology went too far. Just hours before Abe spoke, a group of ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers met to prepare a proposal that urges the government to water down parts of the 1993 apology and deny direct military involvement.

"Some say it is useful to compare the brothels to college cafeterias run by private companies, who recruit their own staff, procure foodstuffs, and set prices," said Nariaki Nakayama, chairman of the group of 120 lawmakers, of which Abe is a member.

"And where there's demand, businesses crop up.. ..but to say women were forced by the Japanese military into service is off the mark," he said. "This issue must be reconsidered, based on truth.. ..for the sake of Japanese honor."

Though rightwingers are unapologetic, actual participants say the assertions are far from the truth.

"The brothels were run by the military. There's no question about that," Kaneko said, adding that he was once ordered to guard sex slaves being circulated around military posts.

"There were so many soldiers, and so few comfort women. Sometimes, four or five women had to serve several hundred soldiers," he said.

Those memories are still vivid for Lee, the former sex slave. For 10 months in the northern Taiwanese town of Hsinchu, soldiers raped her, kicked her and cut at her with swords.

"I was so young. I did not understand what had happened to me," Lee said. "My cries then still ring in my ears. Even now, I can't sleep."

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Why Japanese Guys Wont Give A Head

Ryann Connell

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "Beautiful Country" plan aims to reinvigorate the nation, but Weekly Playboy uses some cunning linguistics to come up with an idea it says will really lick Japan into shape.

Removing the "O" from "Beautiful Country" gives the prime minister's plan an entirely different meaning and, as the men's weekly does, performing a similar twist of the tongue in Japanese by adding an "n" transforms the original name of the scheme from utsukushii kuni to utsukushii kunni - or "Beautiful Cunnilingus."

It's an important alteration, the weekly argues, because love hotels across the country are reporting that men in their 20s are refusing to go down to places where their mouthed ministrations would be most appreciated, and using only the lamest of excuses for their boorish behavior.

"It's not like it's the most visually appealing area, is it?" one refusenik tells Weekly Playboy.

When it comes to explaining why they dislike oral sex, it's plain to see from another man that neither cat nor pussy have got his tongue.

"All the hair gets caught between your teeth," the 27-year-old illustrator tells Weekly Playboy. "And I don't do anything down there with my fingers, either, because they end up smelling."

Weekly Playboy says that young men who refuse to orally pleasure women can be divided into the traumatized (who are frightened by the sight of female genitalia), the neglectful (who aren't even aware of the practice of cunnilingus), and the rawboned -- who simply dislike anything uncooked, including sashimi.

Luminaries from Japan's netherworld, however, say regardless of whatever type of guy they are, it's every young man's duty to stop giving lip and get to work, lickety split.

"If Japanese men are refusing to get between women's legs and lick, it'll be the end of Japan," Goro Tameiki, renowned adult movie auteur, tells Weekly Playboy.

Fubuki Takazawa, an author of erotic novels, also sticks her tongue out at those who refuse to lap up the labia.

"Women have no obligation to perform fellatio on any man who refuses cunnilingus," she says. "I'd say about the only men who've never made a woman orgasm are the ones who think they'll make them climax just by sticking their thing in."

Surprisingly, Dr. Yamanaka of the Toranomon Hibiya Clinic, says there may be a scientific explanation behind why young Japanese men today have developed a phobia toward dining at the wire.

"Because of all the preservatives in food, people today can consume enormous quantities of organic phosphorus. Once a certain amount of organic phosphorus builds up in the body, it attaches itself to calcium and is expelled through waste products. But what this means is that a large build-up of organic phosphorus leads directly to a calcium deficiency," Yamanaka tells Weekly Playboy. "Then you've got the human nervous system, which is made up of sympathetic nerves and parasympathetic nerves. Parasympathetic nerves feed only on calcium. When the body doesn't have enough calcium, the parasympathetic nerves don't work as well as they should.

That sends the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves all skew-whiff. When the sympathetic nerves work stronger than the parasympathetic nerves, it becomes easier to get nervous and aroused. 'Rage' attacks have been discussed pretty frequently in recent years and they're probably triggered by this mechanism. If there is a decreased sexual desire or erection problems, it probably means the parasympathetic nerves aren't working as well as they should be."

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Deadly 'iku iku byo' reaches a climax in Japan

Ryann Connell

Growing numbers of Japanese women are afflicted with an illness that gives them orgasms virtually 24 hours a day. And with suggestions that it could be deadly, the women hardly know whether they're coming or going, according to Shukan Post.

"If a guy simply taps me on the shoulder, I just swoon. Even when I go to the toilet, my body reacts. I'm a little bit scared of myself," one woman sufferer tells Shukan Post.

Another adds: "When I got on the train one day, I could feel blood gushing toward a certain part of my body and it felt so good I almost let out a moan. It was sheer murder when everybody got pushed into the carriage."

Yet another woman has her say.

"Even the vibration of my mobile phone is enough to set me off," she says. "My friend said there's something called Iku Iku byo (Cum Cum Disease). I guess I've got that."

What may be afflicting these women, the best-selling weekly says, is an ailment called persistent sexual arousal syndrome (PSAS).

PSAS has been described as an affliction that brings about orgasm through the slightest of jolts regardless of whether they're aroused, or even thinking about sex. What's more, orgasms experienced by PSAS sufferers are not just momentary phenomena, instead affecting women over anywhere from a few days to a week, with one reported case seeing 300 orgasms in a single day.

Awareness in Japan of PSAS -- which was first documented by Dr. Sandra Leiblum in the United States five years ago -- is growing, especially in the blogsphere, where it is being called Iku Iku byo.

Hideo Yamanaka, a doctor at the Toranomon Hibiya Clinic in Tokyo says the disease can be debilitating.

"For women to orgasm, they need to have some sort of sexual stimulation. There are nerves around the female genitals which react to sexual stimulation. The body gradually builds up to a crescendo, that ascends to a climax," the doctor tells Shukan Post. "However, with this disease, women are mysteriously reaching climax without any external sexual stimulation at all. One possible cause that I can think of is an irregularity in the sensory nerves."

PSAS discover Leiblum says that the disease has a tendency to strike post-menopausal women in their 40s and 50s or those who've undergone hormonal treatment. But she adds that there have also been cases reported among women in their 30s, stressing that too little is known about the syndrome to pinpoint anything and adds that the nature of the ailment means that many sufferers may be too ashamed to report it.

PSAS numbers in the U.S. are high enough for support groups to have popped up, suggesting it won't be too long before Japan sees the same.

"Awareness levels are still too low," Jeannie Allen, the head of PSAS Support, tells Shukan Post. "I think there's a strong possibility that there are Japanese patients."

Manga artist Akira Narita, who says he has slept with over 1,000 different women, says he has come across some he believes may have had PSAS.

"There must have been about 15 who came without me doing a thing. We'd only need to stare in each other's eyes and they'd start wiggling about, gripping tightly onto whatever was around them and their bodies would start to shake. There were others who'd orgasm repeatedly just because I'd stroked their hands," the self-professed sexpert says. "I'd always thought of these women as types who got off in their minds, but I think perhaps they may have had PSAS."

PSAS is not sex addiction and, considering the constant orgasms can be draining, can often be a painful and demeaning experience. Many sufferers are driven to the verge of suicide, prompting medical experts to recommend anybody who suspects they have the ailment to seek a doctor's advice immediately.

"Anybody who has the slightest suspicion," physician Yamanaka tells Shukan Post, "should get to a gynecologist or neurologist straight away."

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