Japan's Underground Sex Scene

With the compliance of religion and government, Japan has the most bohemian sexual culture on earth.

By Chauncey Hollingsworth

Absent the Puritan roots that have shackled American sex life since Jamestown, modern Japan comes from a pagan Shinto-Buddhist background that once encouraged raucous fertility festivals and the placement of dosojin -- "roadside deities" originally shaped like squat phalli and vulvas -- near thoroughfares to protect travelers. Far from discouraging illicit trysts, religion elevated them into a joyous way of continuing the race. Largely, sex was, and is, thought of as a natural part of human existence.

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