Editorial Disclosure: Independent editorial — Ali visited Tokyo as a tourist and attended Meshida's Red Light Secret Tour as a paying participant.

Japan is known for its cutting-edge technology, its extraordinary food, its anime, and its deep cultural modesty around anything to do with sex.

It is also home to one of the most creative, elaborate, and frankly astonishing adult industries in the world.

I went to Tokyo for the first time recently and did what I always do: I started digging into the sex culture immediately. What I found challenged assumptions I didn't even know I had.

This is not a complete picture of Japanese sexuality — no single article could be. It's a series of windows into a culture that is simultaneously more modest and more inventive than almost anywhere else on earth.

Cheating — The Japanese Definition

Cheating in Japan is viewed differently than in the West. A while ago I came across a video of a vlogger interviewing young Japanese women — asking whether it would constitute cheating if their partner paid a sex worker for services. Multiple women said no. The reasoning: it's professional. It's transactional. No emotions are involved.

A 2024 Japan Family Planning Association survey found that 48.3% of married individuals between 16 and 49 were in sexless marriages — having sex less than once a month. That's up 30.9% from 2004. The reasons cited: work fatigue, lack of interest, seeing sex as a nuisance.

When intimacy within marriage declines this significantly, the cultural response in Japan is often not to address it directly. So discreet affairs, paid companionship, and the full range of Japan's unique adult services become the pressure release valve.

Because if it's transactional and paid, many Japanese people view it as categorically different from emotional infidelity. The marriage harmony is preserved. Nobody has to have an uncomfortable conversation.

Love Hotels — Why They Exist and Who Actually Uses Them

Love hotels — short-stay private accommodations designed for couples — exist all over the world but Japan has arguably developed the form furthest.

Themed rooms. Karaoke machines. Vending machines selling sex toys. Rooms that can be booked by the hour, online, anonymously.

They were not originally built for affairs. They were built because Japanese housing and living situations have historically made private intimacy difficult. Small apartments. Multi-generational households. Adult children living with parents well into their 20s and 30s. When you have no private space at home, the love hotel fills a genuine practical need.

Married couples use them. Young people use them. They're woven into the culture in a way that is much less stigmatized than the name might imply to a Western ear.

I did not get to visit one on this trip. It is absolutely on my list for next time.

The Loneliness Economy — Things You Can Rent in Japan

Here is the thing about Japan that I find most illuminating about the country's relationship with intimacy: you can rent a human being to fill almost any social role in your life.

Family members — people you hire to attend weddings, funerals, or social events to help you maintain appearances.

Boyfriend or girlfriend rentals — strictly non-sexual companionship. Someone to go on dates with, hold hands in public with, have a relationship experience with.

Ossan rental — a middle-aged man you can hire for advice, help with errands, or just casual conversation.

Cuddle cafes — establishments where you pay to cuddle with someone. No sexual element. Just physical closeness and the calming effect of human contact.

Host and hostess clubs — bars where beautiful people listen to you, laugh at your jokes, and make you feel seen. As Meshida explained on our red light tour: the main reason men go is for the boost of confidence.

What all of these have in common is that they're addressing loneliness. Not just sexual loneliness — the broader human loneliness of feeling unseen, unheard, untouched, unimportant.

Japan has one of the highest rates of social isolation in the developed world. These services exist because the need is real. And rather than pretending the need doesn't exist, Japan has built an entire consumer economy around meeting it.

I find this sad and ingenious simultaneously.

Sex Education — The Gap

Japanese sex education is mandatory but basic. Conservative. Focused almost exclusively on biology, reproduction, and the message that abstinence is safest.

Consent is not taught. LGBTQ+ identities are not covered. Pleasure is not mentioned.

The result is predictable: young people learn about sex from the internet and from each other. In Japan's case, with Pornhub banned since 2020, a lot of that learning comes from anime and from a culture that has a lot of products and services for sexual needs and very few frameworks for talking about them honestly.

Sound familiar? It should.

The Contradiction That Defines All of This

Japan is publicly one of the most modest sexual cultures in the world. Privately it has built one of the most elaborate, creative, and thoroughly developed adult industries on earth.

These two things are not contradictions. They are the same thing expressed through different channels.

Japan has not eliminated desire by refusing to discuss it publicly. It has simply organized desire very carefully into private, categorized, well-defined spaces. The public face is composed. The private life is full.

Whether that's wisdom or avoidance probably depends on what you ask the 48% of married Japanese adults having sex less than once a month.

Fascinated by Japan's sex culture and want to go deeper? I went on a red light district tour with Meshida — a Japanese comedian and YouTuber who has built one of the most entertaining and genuinely educational tours of Tokyo's adult entertainment world. It's part history lesson, part comedy show, part cultural deep-dive. One of the best tours I've done anywhere in the world. Open to anyone visiting Tokyo.

🎟 Book Meshida's tour: tidycal.com/meshida/comedy-tour
📺 Meshida on YouTube: youtube.com/c/JapaneseComedianMeshida

💬 Is It Just Me?

What surprised you most about Japan's relationship with sex and intimacy? Have you visited a love hotel, a host club, or experienced any part of this culture firsthand?

Submit anonymously → /is-it-just-me

The Details

📍 Tokyo, Japan
🎟 Meshida's Red Light Secret Tour: tidycal.com/meshida/comedy-tour
📺 Meshida YouTube: youtube.com/c/JapaneseComedianMeshida

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About the Author

Ali Imperiale is a sex education student with the Sexual Health Alliance, a writer, and a traveler. She has visited 40+ countries and writes about sex, intimacy, and culture from wherever she currently is. The Nookie Nook is her shame-free, algorithm-free intimacy library.