Tongue-tied: A look inside the weird world of Japanese doorknob licking

Over the past three years or so, I have written a number of articles on various aspects and practices of Japanese sexual culture. These have included Oshouji (i.e., a calligraphy fetish where the decorative writing is done on a person’s – usually naked – body), Hentai (i.e., Japanese hardcore Manga cartoon pornography), Nyotaimori (i.e., eating a variety of foods or a whole meal off somebody’s naked body), Tamakeri (i.e., the masochistic practice of getting sexual pleasure and arousal from being kicked in the testicles), Burusera (i.e., Japanese shops that sell [amongst other things] soiled female undergarments and fetishist school uniforms), Omorashi (i.e., deriving sexual pleasure from having a full bladder or a sexual attraction to someone else experiencing the discomfort of a full bladder) and Shokushu Goukan (i.e., tentacle rape).

About 18 months ago, I came across the Art-Sheep website featuring loads of photographs of young Japanese women licking doorknobs. At first I thought it was some kind of spoof website but after a few hours of online research I realised that it was not a joke, and that there were a fair few articles examining the behaviour. For instance, an article on the Cracked website (‘The 6 Most Bizarre Safe For Work Fetishes’) claimed that the explanation for such sites was “straightforward” and that the Japanese pornography censorship laws are so draconian that it forces Japanese “to be more creative about what they masturbate to”. The article claimed:

“Anybody with a porn addiction can tell you, in order to keep things fresh, you have to get a bit weird. Japan, always on the cutting edge of innovation, simply took this idea and ran with it all the way to Planet Dick Tentacle, which brings us to these images of girls licking doorknobs…Men (and presumably some women) get turned on by the sight of females licking anything. The curse of being a woman is knowing that you can’t eat an ice cream cone or a banana in public without several nearby males achieving a state of semi-arousal”.

A number of online articles claim that because of the strict censorship laws in Japan, the country is “infamous for using a wide variety of stand-ins” for penises as there is a “crackdown on the depiction of genitalia” (so swords, fish, vegetables, and – as mentioned briefly above – tentacles, have been used as substitute phallic images). It has also meant that Japanese manga animators and videogame artists have become more innovative in displaying acts of sexuality. The Cracked article also claimed the doorknob licking trend “is a fairly big deal in Japan, even getting featured on national television”. But what is the attraction of seeing women specifically lick doorknobs (beyond the obvious phallic symbolism)? The Cracked article implies that it could be a masochistic act in that the women is typically viewed on her knees seen licking something that arguably has more bacteria on it than most other household items (bar the toilet), and that the act is therefore degrading and humiliating. Of all the images I have seen myself on various websites, all of the Japanese women were fully clothed (although some did appear to pander to clothing and uniform fetishes, such as the young women being dressed in schoolgirl uniforms, or for those with a fetish for spectacles).

A number of articles (such as those in the ‘Further reading’ list below) report that doorknob licking originated from the self-taught Japanese artist Ryuko Azuma renowned for his sexually provocative illustrations (you can check out some of his work here). More bizarrely, the impetus was (according to Azuma) “a drunken tweet…I tweeted that a collection of photos of a girl licking a doorknob [and thought it] would be a big hit”. The tweeted photographs went viral and subsequently featured on a Japanese television show. Azuma collaborated with a young photographer Ai Ehara, and ‘Doorknob Shojo’ (i.e., the ‘Doorknob Girl’) took on a life of its’ own. An article on the Kotaku website noted:

“The settings vary as much as the doorknobs, from nondescript apartments to crumbling Showa-era dwellings. The doors are typically closed, and the rooms are shut. The other side cannot be penetrated by the viewer, making the pictures, even when they are outside, closed. Some models play to the camera, other don’t. These are private moments, though, and the viewer is a fly on the wall – or door. Tropes that commonly appear in anime, manga, and video games populate the pictures. Some of the girls are wearing schoolbags or carrying phallic recorders and school notebooks. Some of the girls are in school uniforms. Others are dressed like female office workers and even have wear worker name badges around their necks. In Japan, where clothes were traditionally used to mark class and status, these are all identifiers and are used to provide enough information for the viewer to finish the story, making them as an essential part of the narrative. All of these items are meaningless alone. It’s the viewer, informed by popular culture like anime, TV, and games as well as real life, that gives them meaning”.

The photos appeared on Tumblr and featured Ehara herself. (You can have a look at the Tumblr photographs here). Following the viral success of the original photographs, Azuma and Ehara hired and photographed a number of models with their mouths on doorknobs and licking them. As the article in Kotaku noted:

“The photos depict a variety of young girls (shojo) with their mouths and tongues touching doorknobs. The imagery is sexually charged. Doorknobs are ubiquitous and common, bland and banal. Intrinsically, doorknobs are not sexual objects in the same way that, say, a banana is. Yet, their position on a door, require the girls to kneel and by placing their mouths on the knobs. It’s undeniably submissive. A doorknob is not necessarily a sexual object. Its purpose is to open doors. Licking is not only a sexual act. Its purpose is to taste. The juxtaposition comes across as titillation and provocative, designed to elicit a response. The photos might look submissive, or exploitive, but they confront the viewer, asking the question, ‘What do you see?’ The pictures can dominate and even exploit the viewer’s notions of foreplay. The photos are psychosexual, with the viewer, if he or she so chooses, filling in the blanks and replacing the boring with the sensual. For such a commonplace object, the doorknob is a perfect phallic symbol. Like [penises], doorknobs come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from short and fat to long and thin. And like [penises], doorknobs can transmit diseases”.

It’s hard to assess who accesses and enjoys such photos and I know of no non-Japanese sites that have featured such models. I’ll leave you with a quote from Azuma himself who claims that it is up to the person viewing to interpret his art:

“Basically, we shot whatever doorknobs were at the location. But just in case, I always carried a backup knob with me to switch out. I always think a work is completed by the viewer. So whatever the viewer brings to the work is sufficient…Many people feel like the photos are a metaphor for oral sex, but we’re not especially taking the photos with that in mind. See whatever you want to see”.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Art-Sheep (2015). “Doorknob girl”: Japan and the trend of girls licking doorknobs. August 17. Located at: http://art-sheep.com/doorknob-girl-japan-and-the-trend-of-girls-licking-doorknobs/

Ashcraft, B. (2011). The art of girls licking doorknobs. Kotaku, August 9. Located at: http://kotaku.com/5838276/the-art-of-girls-licking-doorknobs/

The Chive (2015). Leave it to Japan to create the weirdest trend EVER. May 1. Located at: http://thechive.com/2012/01/05/leave-it-to-japan-to-create-the-weirdest-trend-ever-35-photos/

Ntumy, E.K. (2013). The 6 most bizarre safe for work fetishes. Cracked, November 2. Located at: http://www.cracked.com/article_20691_the-6-most-bizarre-safe-work-fetishes.html

Pam (2012). Crazy Japanese trends – Hard to resist? Imperfect Women, March 1. Located at: http://imperfectwomen.com/crazy-japanese-trends-–-hard-to-resist/

Sumitra (2012). Girls licking doorknobs – more madness from Japan. Oddity Central, January 13. Located at: http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/girls-licking-doorknobs-more-madness-from-japan.html

Octopussy: The strange world of animated pornography and ‘tentacle erotica’

In a previous blog, I examined toonophilia (i.e., a sexual paraphilia in which individuals are sexually and/or emotionally attracted to cartoon characters). I also mentioned in the same blog that some toonophiles are very specific in regard to what they find erotic and that one particular sub-type of tooniphilia involves those individuals who find Japanese ‘anime’ characters particularly erotic. While researching that blog, I came across the lecture notes of an unnamed academic (posted by one of his/her students) that I found interesting (although I don’t know what the primary sources for the notes were). I’m aware that Japanese comics are known as ‘manga’ and that cartoon pornography is highly prevalent (inside and outside of Japan) and is known as ‘hentai’ (but I can’t claim to have known much else before researching this blog).

“Enthusiasts [of anime/Hentai/Manga] are technically known as otaku (Japanese for anime fan), and most of these cartoons have a hardcore, bondage, or rubber/latex flavor. Erotic art has been around, of course, since antiquity, but anime and hentai are more like the adult versions of ‘new animation’ cartoons (like Sailor Moon). The Japanese government requires censorship (blotting out) of genitalia in any picture showing penetration (with the toon showing that ‘look’ of painful enjoyment), but easily downloadable programs like G-mask can remove the censorship masking. Other cartoon images range from Betty Boop, Disney, the Flintsones, and Jetsons to highly erotic fantasy artwork (sometimes featuring penetration by laboratory devices, aliens, or cephalopod squids). Manga art is the most popular American variant, coming from the underground comix culture of R. Crumb and followers. The mutant alien (with tentacles) space theme is probably the most popular, followed by a vegetation or animal fetish, and then only about 30% thoroughly enjoy that degrading ’look’ on the victim’s face. A higher percentage enjoys something of the same ‘look’ in hardcore cumshot photos”.

As I said, I have no idea where the claims made originate (particularly the percentages given), but they appear to have good face validity based on my own anecdotal reading of the popular literature that I have tracked down online. Unsurprisingly, the most popular consumers of hentai are men. The Wikipedia entry on hentai also adds that:

“Eroge games [erotoc games] in particular combine three favored media, cartoons, pornography and gaming into an experience. The hentai genre engages a wide audience that expands yearly, with that audience desiring better quality and storylines, or works which push the creative envelope. The unusual and extreme depictions in hentai is not about perversion so much as it is an example of the profit-oriented industry. Normal sexual situations don’t sell as well as the more unusual situations, such as depicting sex at schools or bondage. Dr. Megha Hazuria Gorem, a clinical psychologist says, ‘Because toons are a kind of final fantasy, you can make the person look the way you want him or her to look. Every fetish can be fulfilled.’ Dr. Narayan Reddy a sexologist, commented on the eroge games, ‘Animators make new games because there is a demand for them, and because they depict things that the gamers do not have the courage to do in real life, or that might just be illegal, these games are an outlet for suppressed desire’”.

Another aspect of hentai that I kept coming across was ‘tentacle porn’ and ‘tentacle rape’ (or ‘shokushu goukan’ as it is known as in Japan) that a number of articles I read says it dates back to the eighteenth century although the more recent tentacle rape genre is generally attributed to Urotsukidoji, manga created by controversial erotic cartoonist Toshio Maeda who emphasized the elements of sexual assault. Maeda claims to have introduced tentacle porn as a way to circumvent Japan’s very strict censorship laws. These laws didn’t allow the depiction of penises but at the time (in 1986) didn’t forbid sexual penetration by anything else (such as tentacles or robotic appendages). In an online article on “depraved fetishes that are older than you think”, the author Nathan Reed reported that:

“For men, the [tentacle rape] fetish appeals to those who enjoy seeing women humiliated and subjugated by something that isn’t even human. While [Toshio] Maeda may have created the modern tentacle rape, he wasn’t the inventor – not even close. Maeda was preceded by Katsushika Hokusai, an artist from the late 18th and early 19th century. Hokusai was the artist of the ‘Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji’ an internationally recognized series of prints that earned him fame both locally and globally…Hokusai’s ‘The Dream Of The Fisherman’s Wife’ is speculated to be the first instance of tentacle erotica…[Also] check out ‘Tentacles of Desire: The Man Who Loved Cephalopods’. Contained within is the story of Joshua Handley, an English artist in the late 19th century whose travels to Japan resulted in an obsession with tentacle erotica. Handley attempted multiple times to publish some of it in England, even coming up with some of his own to add to the table. People were appalled – not by the tentacles, but at the notion that the women in the stories were actually enjoying themselves, because for some reason rape would make it much less disgusting”.

A 2001 paper by Dr. Danielle Talerico in the academic journal Impressions showed argued that although Western audiences have usually viewed Hokusai’s painting as rape, “Japanese audiences of the Edo period would have associated it with consensual sex”. This is also echoed in the Wikipedia entry that claims ‘tentacle erotica’ can be of a consensual nature “but frequently has elements of non-consensual sex”. It also notes that it has become much more popular outside of Japan and Asia and has found an audience among people in both Europe and the US but “still remains a small, fetish-oriented part of the adult film industry. While most tentacle erotica is animated, there are also a smaller number of live-action movies featuring this theme”.

Some academics believe that tentacle rape – even in animated form is a step too far. For instance, a 2004 book chapter by Dr. J.P. Dahlquist, and Dr. L.G. Vigilant asserts that:

“The experience of hentai is morally distancing. Tentacle hentai offers the telegenetic signs of the most perverse and debased sexualities. It opens for fantastic examination a sexuality that transgresses all ‘simulated’ moralities of the ‘real’ world, where tentacle sex between nubile girl-women and cloned boy-men monsters are the order of the day – a monstrous sex-feast of the most abnormal acts: pedophilic bestiality, sex with machines, sex with cyborgs, sex with dangerous protruding tentacles, and, of course, an endless stream of the most debasing, brutal, and humiliating rape images”.

Whether animated pornography is less ‘harmful’ than non-animated pornography is something I will leave to others more knowledgeable than me to debate. However, there is clearly a market for hentai more generally, and tentacle porn more specifically as evidenced by those who sell it commercially. The whole area raises interesting moral questions which I hope to return to in a future blog.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Absolute Astronomy (2013). Tentacle rape. Located at: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Tentacle_rape

Dahlquist, J.P., & Vigilant, L.G. (2004). Way better than real: Manga sex to tentacle hentai. In D.D. Waskul (Ed.), Net.sex: Readings on sex, pornography, and the Internet (pp. 91–103). New York: Peter Lang.

Ortega-Brena, Mariana (2009). Peek-a-boo, I see you: Watching Japanese hard-core animation. Sexuality and Culture, 13, 17–31.

Reed, N. (2010). 6 Depraved Sexual Fetishes That Are Older Than You Think. Cracked.com, March 30. Located at: http://www.cracked.com/article_18472_6-depraved-sexual-fetishes-that-are-older-than-you-think.html

Talerico, D. (2001). Interpreting sexual imagery in Japanese prints: A fresh approach to Hokusai’s Diver and Two Octopi. Impressions: The Journal of the Ukiyo-e Society of America, 23, 24-42.

Wikipedia (2013). Hentai. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentai

Wikipedia (2013). Manga. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manga

Wikipedia (2013). Tentacle erotica. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentacle_erotica

Wikipedia (2013). Urotsukidoji. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urotsukidōji