Does Japanese elder porn get better with age?
By Elliot Chan, Opinions Editor
For a country that censors genitals in âregularâ pornography, while producing an ample amount of grotesque tentacle erotica, bukakee, and tamakeri, itâs not hard to believe that 20-30 per cent of the current adult entertainment in Japanese cyberspace is elder porn, i.e. old people having sex on camera.
It makes sense, after all: Japan has an aging demographic with a younger generation less interested in intercourse and more interested in relationships with animated avatars, inanimate feminine objects like pillows or dolls, and computer generated personalities. Now, Iâm not one to criticize what other people do in the bedroom as long as no one is getting hurtâwhich Iâm not always sure of when âresearchingâ; what bothers me is that pornography is starting to give modern society a musky stank and an unachievable expectation for intimate interactions.
âIt’s mostly older men who watch. Maybe some single women who are a little older,â Shigeo Tokuda, 79-year-old porn star told the Globe and Mail. âDefinitely, they want to have some connection to a character that’s their age, to feel they can have the same satisfaction.â
I get it; we all have fetishes and we need outlets so we donât repress the animal urges inside of us and explode. But we have made pedophiles out of people who are attracted to young girls and boysâwould watching animated pornography (hentai) of children be any more acceptable? Niche markets work, every art form relies on some form of niche to keep the medium afloat, but just because there is a supply and demand, does that mean itâs appropriate?
I personally donât want to see my grandparents doing itâand I wouldnât want other people seeing my family members do it either. That shit is traumatic. The same way a family would be disappointed in their teenager for partaking in recreational drugs, having an elder adult porn star at the dinner table is not any less reassuring.
That being said, all porn stars must deal with that eventual fate of having someone near and dear see their work; itâs just a naked, wrinkly elephant in the room.
Sure, elders are adults and they deserve to make decisions of their own, but with the Internet being accessible to anyone of any age, shouldnât we be more conscious of what is online?
I donât want to make any low blows here, but the term elder porn means that the people participating in the act are old, and therefore, will soon face the inevitable. What would it be like living in a world where weâre watching pornography of people who are no longer alive? What will that do to our psyches with such content so easily accessible? Will videos be relics or artifacts of Japanâs ahead-of-its-time evolution? The Internet is able to hold content temporarily, but any computer-user can save the files onto their own hard drive. Porn stars die, but the pornography they create doesnât.
Iâm not against elder porn; Iâm against the idea that the pornography world has created bedridden, tissue-wasting creatures who arenât trying to achieve anything greater than self-satisfactionâoh, and sex robots. Sure, what people get off on is none of my business and I donât want it to be, but I do feel there is going to be a legitimate problem; maybe not now, but if the trend continues and the Japanese continue to build an empire of bizarre erotic entertainment, how is that going to affect the next generation?
The same way recreational drugs have made a blip in our radars and demanded attentionâI foresee pornography doing the same, perhaps to a wider scope.