You’ve got the freshly taken-off scent of panties.

If you’re a bit kinkier, you’ve got the pee-stained panties spray.

Maybe you’ve even tried the high school girl menstruation smell bottle.

What’s next? What more could the market offer you? As it turns out, quite a lot!

Which all begs the question: What is it about Japan and smell fetishes? We haven’t done a comprehensive survey in any way, shape, or form, but it really does seem like something quite peculiar to the adult market here. Smell fetishes themselves are certainly universal, though our feeling is that the Japanese sex industry is special in really going out of its way to cater to them.

We’ll leave the exact reasons for that to the cultural anthropologists and armchair commentators, though it must have just started at some point and then the market rolled with it. The results is an incredibly varied and rich genre of sprays and scents.

The latest is the Music Idol Poop Smell Spray, which is meant to capture the fragrance of a Japanese Akihabara music group singer’s toilet-bowl aftermath. Hmm . . . when does “intimate” become “too intimate”?

So if you like the cute members of AKB48 or any of its myriad sister groups, but want to smell them rather than screw them, this is the right item for you. (The publicity images make it pretty obvious that AKB48 is the target here.)

Coming in a handy smell, you can use it to add scent to your hands, toys, dolls, pillows, posters, costumes, panties, and more.

The poop smell spray is available from Kanojo Toys, which is actually one of the few sources for getting a wide range of Japanese smell fetish items internationally.

And if this is your cup of tea, then you’ll definitely want to check out the Schoolgirl Fart Smell Spray by Tama Toys.

Things have been quiet for a while but Fukuoka has now made a return to gravure for the first time in a year with a shoot for the July 12 issue of Weekly Flash.

The 27-year-old Tokyo University of Science graduate is ravishing, naked under a white jacket or wearing just panties while lying on her front on a bed. Who needs coffee in the morning when you can look at pictures like this to wake you up?!

Her own posts about the shoot on her popular Instagram page inevitably attracted a strong reaction, though Fukuoka herself has courted controversy by denouncing a direct message she received from a soccer player. The said player made a fairly harmless comment that he hopes a “strong wind will blow,” in reference to the jacket Fukuoka is wearing that is covering her naked body.

Fukuoka, however, reacted very negatively to this and shared it with a friend, accusing the sportsman of sexual harassment in messages that have somehow leaked online. Apparently she doesn’t want people looking at her posts for “erotic reasons.” Hmm, we reckon that’s unlikely!

She’s a strong woman, for good reason. Since the pandemic, Fukuoka has become immensely successful from live streaming, claiming to have earned ¥100 million this way, and even wrote a book about her experience. She now runs her own agency for live streamers and celebrities.

So despite her success, she chose to return to gravure. Little wonder that she’s unimpressed by messages from sportsmen!

It’s hard to keep up with all the new arrivals on the scene and while many gravure idols try to expand into acting and TV work without explicitly “graduating” from glamor modeling, some do more formally retire. But even this is often done without much fanfare.

Perhaps it gets announced on social media and then that’s it: the idol is unceremoniously removed from their agency’s website and it’s like they never existed except for some corner of the interwebs or on magazine covers that sell for a few yen on auction sites.

Momoka Ishida (石田桃香) is one case like this. She seemed to be one of the most popular and prominent gravure idols of the past two or three years, but suddenly retired from the industry this month at the end of her contract with her agency. (In the jimusho system, idols and entertainers are employed by their agency, not the other way round.)

The 24-year-old Osaka native might possibly return with another agency and under a new professional name, but it is also quite likely we will never see her again.

She posted a sudden announcement on July 1 that she was retiring from the industry after reaching the end of her contract on June 30.

Of course, it could be for positive reasons: marriage, pregnancy, and so on. But gradols are badly paid — because there are so many of them — and we imagine it’s not a job people can do for long unless they feel like they are going somewhere. Likewise, agencies are not likely to keep someone on the payroll unless they can keep getting callbacks for shoots and paid appearances, especially when there is an almost endless supply of young women waiting to take an idol’s place.

Ishida made her TV debut in 2012 and released her first and only print photo book in 2021 (she released numerous digital photo books between 2019 and 2021).

She was first featured on the cover of Weekly Young Jump in 2019. Her final cover (that we know of) was for Flash in October 2021 and also released an image DVD in late 2021 and a 2022 calendar. Things seemed to be happening for her around that time but there are essentially almost no new professional announcements after the start of the year, indicating that opportunities dried up (or she was turning them down). Ishida also made occasional forays into acting and it’s possible she might pursue this next under a new name — but let’s not get our hopes up too much. We’ve been disappointed too many times before!

She apparently had a following in Taiwan and would travel to appear in events there, though they seem like relatively small street performances. (So the next time you see an idol performing on the street in a Japanese city, imagine their future career in porn!)

Here is Marui back in her Taiwanese days.

She has so far released three videos (one in May, June, and July) for SOD Create and has another on the slate for August. Her first was a 204-minute epic (1SDAB00220), while her second was shorter but was a blowjob fetish and contained a whopping 10 ejaculations (all, naturally, on her face). We wonder if her future releases will be similarly ambitious.

Moeka Marui has also released two digital photo books under her new name, both of which came out earlier this month.

So we were pleased to hear (perhaps rather belatedly) about this trend among women in South Korea for geongangmi, or “healthy beauty,” which has led more women to embrace a larger, muscular physique over the slim and slender look that dominates the mainstream.

Korean female bodybuilders are not new, of course, but this is a more mainstream look that celebrities have promoted, such as pop star Hyolyn and popular actor and boxer Lee Si-young.

Traits included a strong tan and muscular body that makes you look outgoing and active.

Here is Hyolyn, who certainly looks like she could take on any Japanese music idols.

Here is 26-year-old Yoo Wonhee.

And this is fitness model Sara Choi, who we assume likes to be on top.

Of course, this is, at least in part, a challenge to previous ideals of beauty in East Asia as pale-skinned and skinny, though geongangmi is itself arguably another ideal that is difficult to obtain for most women.

Incidentally, among Japanese women, our current favorite lady who could be described as geongangmi is Rose Melle, who shows off her amazing physique on social media in almost daily selfies from the gym.

But the CliPro Onahole for Women looks like a pocket pussy, but it’s not really, nor is it like any onahole you’ve used before.

Forget the penis. The toy is designed to pleasure the clitoris.

The basic concept behind the design is actually quite simple and we’re almost surprised that apparently no one else in the industry got here first.

The CliPro Onahole for Women, which is available from Kanojo Toys internationally, is made by Ligre Japan, who claim it’s the first of its kind in the whole world.

Here’s how it works. You hold the toy with one hand and rub the flat side over the clitoris and vulva. The flat side is not actually flat, but has lots of folds and a hole — not for a penis but for the clitoris, which it “catches” and “flicks” as you rub.

Who says that female masturbator toys are all about vibrators and dildos? Not Ligre Japan.

Not only that, we reckon this would be a great toy for foreplay, where your partner (male or female) uses the CliPro to stimulate your clitoris before taking things further.

But be careful, folks: the boys in blue are not as keen on your content!

Yuina Yamamoto was recently arrested with her boyfriend, Ryuken Yoshino, a restaurant owner in Nagoya, for public indecency.

The pair, who live together, were known for making sex tapes under the name RYO&YUU and posting them online to make money.

Since last summer, Yamamoto and Yoshino filmed videos and then published them on platforms like PornHub, wearing face masks to cover their identity. They earned around 2.5 million yen a month doing this and around 30 million a year.

With that kind of money rolling in, it no doubt encouraged the couple to take bigger risks to make more videos.

They were arrested on July 4, though the charges relate to an incident in mid-November last year, when the 22-year-old Yamamoto was completely naked and the 38-year-old Yoshino was naked from the waist down in a park in Toyota City. No doubt someone connected to the police saw the video and identified the location. We’re sure that whoever it was watched the video purely for professional purposes!

According to police reports, Yoshino has admitted the charges, while Yamamoto, who works as a beautician in her day job, denies being naked in the park.

Nana Asakawa was huge at the end of the 2010s and likewise began to take high-profile acting jobs, including sex scenes in the Haram Marriage TV adaptation and We’re Too Bad at Romance.

Those appearances were great but were non-nude.

Fortunately, Nana has heard our clamors for more and has answered with what we think is her first nude shoot.

It’s not quite up there with the likes of Tsubasa Hazuki or Kyouka, but this is a sensual shoot with a bathing theme. Her butt looks very cute.

The 23-year-old Nana Asakawa is releasing her fourth photo book, “Growth,” and has promoted it with spreads in issues of Weekly Playboy this month and last. These mark her first gravure shoots in three years and show a more mature side to her beauty. The photo book is commemorating 10 years since she started in the idol industry.

The “mosaic” look has become an iconic part of Japanese adult video: those grainy pixels where the penis and vagina should be.

Personally, we don’t mind it. But some are put off by the constant blur and there is clearly a market for uncensored Japanese porn. Just don’t try selling it if you are in Japan.

Masayuki Nakamoto was arrested last October for selling uncensored adult videos online. The 44-year-old had used software to decensor (de-pixellate) the videos, removing the mosaic, and then reselling his efforts to the public.

This was a workaround, since the mosaic is actually done by hand — there are people in Japan whose sole job is to pixellate penises and vaginas — and this coding can’t be removed. Instead, the canny Nakamoto employed an artificial intelligence program with machine learning to simulate visually what the obscured genitals looked like and then add a photorealistic representation over the top.

Strictly speaking, he was further modifying the pixellated image with best-guess genitals, not restoring the holy grail per se. But the superimposition results were apparently pretty good. So much so that he sold thousands of videos he edited like this and earned a decent ¥11 million for his efforts.

His trial in Kyoto on charges of copyright violation and “displaying obscene electromagnetically recorded media” has just ended in an inevitable guilty verdict.

At the end of June, he was sentenced to two years in prison — suspended for three years due to remorse Nakamoto showed — and a fine of ¥2 million yen.

So next time you watch Japanese AV without mosaic, spare a thought for the risks taken by some generous soul to make it available for the public!

With the recent passing of the controversial new law regulating the porn industry, how are candidates responding to the current situation?

We found two intriguing examples among candidates for the upcoming Upper House election.

Riyo Takahashi, the 48-year-old founder of the Japanese video hosting site FC2, is running on the ticket of the NHK Party, whose primarily objective is to battle the national broadcaster and its fees that citizens are obliged to pay. Takahashi, however, has his sights set on other targets: instead of the usual “crush NHK” slogan associated with the party’s candidates, he says he wants to “crush mosaic censorship.” In other words, Takahashi’s manifesto is legalizing uncensored porn in Japan.

FC2 is best known for hosting porn video, which has led to legal troubles for both the site and uploaders. Takahashi actually lives abroad and is apparently on an international wanted list, meaning he cannot return to Japan to  campaign in person. FC2 would no doubt benefit a lot if porn was no longer censored in Japan. Takahashi is also openly opposed to the new adult video law, possibly making him unique among candidates for the upcoming election.

Another prospective lawmaker is Yukiko Kaname, who is running as a Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan candidate. Her platform is equality for sex workers, which is something that has gained more public attention in Japan recently due to a law case over subsidy discrimination during the pandemic and a protest that received much press coverage.

Kaname is a representative of two organizations that support sex workers. Her election promises include fighting to stop a proposed law banning prostitution (currently, the law prohibits profiting from prostitution but not sex work itself). She also wants to make stronger laws against video and photos taken without consent at hotels and homes. In addition, she wants privacy for sex workers if they are the victim of a crime, since being named in the media can lead to problems in their lives.

Moreover, she wants better protection for sex workers by relaxing restrictions on brothel renovations in the fuzoku law to ensure that establishments are safer. Kaname is referring her to how brothels are often housed in cramped, old buildings that are fire hazards. They require police approval before they can be renovated to make them safer, which encourages landlords and managers to cut corners.