Oh, how we love Mainichi Daily News. It seems a medical text book called “Vaginas and Pain” has become a hot ticket for Akihabara otaku interested in “learning more about female anatomy”:

Akihabara has gone from iPods to pudenda, according to Shukan Post (12/8).

Where the Tokyo district was once best known for its plethora of electronics shops, recent years have seen the otaku swarm into Akihabara and make it their virtual capital.

Now, they’ve created a huge hit out of “Joseiki to Itami (Vaginas and Pain),” a medical textbook that features a huge hand-drawn painting of female genitalia on its cover.

“We started selling it in September and news spread over the web, which sent sales skyrocketing. Salarymen in their 20s and 30s are buying most of the copies. But I still have absolutely no idea why it’s selling so well,” Junpei Kawasaki, operator of Akihabara store Sangatsu Usagi, tells Shukan Post.


Yes no idea. No idea at all.

Much more interesting info in the link, such as the fact that to otaku the book, which includes information on endometriosis and PMS, is “widely referred to among the geeks as ‘the vagina book.'”

Perhaps this could be a great market for Phoebe Gloeckner, who long made a living painting medical illustrations.

1 COMMENT

  1. Are there still pornography laws on the books in Japan that prohibit photographic depiction of anything south of the border, so to speak? If so, that might partially explain why the book is selling so strongly, since it’s the only way to see that particular naughty bit of a woman’s anatomy.

    Yeah, I know, medical drawings and diagrams aren’t exactly a turn-on, but they’re horny males and they’ll find a way.