Wai Wai fertility shrines
Wai Wai delves deeper into Japanese erotic cultural history with a guide to surviving ancient fertility shrines around Tokyo.
Long ago, sex was sacred and in many parts of the Japanese countryside phallic shrines still stand in testimony to this belief. "In old Japan, people believed sex was a means of fighting off evil spirits or natural disasters," said Akio Maruyama, a commentator on religion, explaining the proliferation of the phallic icons across the country. But Maruyama notes that with the Meiji-era (1868-1912) government making Shinto an official national religion, the titillating tabernacles started to disappear. As a result, Tokyo and nearby areas lost nearly all their phallic shrines. [But] some phallic fossils can still be found in the nation's capital and its surrounds.
While we're there, some current Wai Wai sidebar blurbs summarizing stories from the Japanese tabloids:
Spa! (7/2) gasps that Saudi Arabia's disastrous showing at the World Cup may have been caused by team members' overindulgence in porno videos.
Hanashi no Channel (7/18) says housewives eager to make money selling their bodies are undercutting the prices charged by high school girls.
Tokusatsu Shinsengumi (7/20) provides a list of which cutie female TV performers are still virgins.
