Why do people love hentai, Japanese anime porn? In Hong Kong, suppressed sexual desire and interest in Japanese culture play a part
Hentai means ‘perverse sexual desire’, and can feature anything from huge sex organs to alien tentacles. Experts say Hongkongers’ conservatism and love of Japanese culture, as well as a lack of sex education, drives their interest in it
Embarrassed but fascinated, Eva first stumbled across hentai porn at the age of 15 while looking for video games on the internet.
Since then the Hong Kong office worker, who was born and raised in the city and requested anonymity, has developed a passion for the genre of Japanese anime that translates as “perverse sexual desire”.
Hentai has many subgenres that, among others, can feature things such as exaggerated sex organs, bestiality, lolicon (sexual attraction to pre-teen girls), dickgirls (girls with penises) and aliens.
“Some positions or settings are difficult to be shown in real action [porn] movies,” says Eva, 25, explaining why she is attracted to hentai. “For example, there’s a subgenre [called] tentacles … women mating with alien tentacles. It would look wrong in a real movie because it would just be CG [computer graphics].”
Eva is far from alone in her interest. According to statistics from Pornhub, the world’s largest pornography website, Hongkongers’ top site search in 2017 was “Japan” and the top category was “hentai”.
Katrien Jacobs is an associate professor of cultural and religious studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who specialises in sexuality and pornography. She attributes the popularity of hentai in the city to the interest in exotic Japanese culture.
