Pink Samurai

To the Western mind, the Japanese attitude toward sex is at once bizarrely structured yet refreshingly frank. In a land where marriages can still be arranged and a woman s place is most definitely in the home, love hotels dot the landscape and late-night television is brazenly risqué by Western standards. Censorship is perverse: no pubic hair may be shown, yet violent porno-comics featuring gang-rape and mutilation are openly read on the train. Homosexuality has a long, venerable history of tolerance, but an office worker gay or not will forgo promotion if he doesn t marry. These are just some of the paradoxes explored in this provocative book. Written nearly a decade ago, but still timely, this is an eye-opening examination of Japanese love, marriage, and eroticism.