Japan has a trouble with “masturbation.” Not the act itself, however instead the word. Masutābēshon , made by doing this due to the syllabic framework of the language, feels a little unpleasant and too international. There is the native ji’i (literally “self-comfort”) but that sounds coldly professional. Shikoru, conversely, is too casual, verging on repulsive. The most safe selection has long been onanī, but also that term has constraints in everyday speech.
“Initially, I often used words ‘onanī’ in our duplicate because I intended to stabilize it,” says Koichi Matsumoto, creator and president of TENGA, a Japanese sexual aid company (the term “sex plaything” doesn’t align with their philosophy). “However no matter how much we bring it to the surface, some words are too unpleasant to utilize in public. After the company removed, many individuals located it much easier to say ‘TENGA’ instead.”
TENGA introduced in 2005 as a male masturbatory help manufacturer and is currently the biggest business of its kind in Japan, with consolidated sales revenue of regarding 12 5 billion yen (over $ 77 million) in 2025 Accessibility has actually been an obvious cornerstone of their success that has made the company name a euphemistic choice for reviewing self-pleasure. TENGA products are today offered anywhere, from Japanese convenience stores to wellness and appeal retailers, usually with people unfamiliar with the firm never ever understanding they’re checking out sex toys.
Starting with their initial red-with-silvery-white-stripes mug series, TENGA products have always extra looked like customer electronics and so forth, marketing themselves appropriately as non-pornographic, sex-related health things. You won’t find any kind of nudes or anything remotely sex-related on their packaging or in their look. Nevertheless, according to Matsumoto, the lack of a physiological style in TENGA’s schedule surpasses creating mass-market appeal.
“When I was initial doing my study on adult goods, I really felt that the onahoru [artificial vaginas] were replacement for women. Like they were suggested to replace ladies,” he explains. “It was as if they compacted actual individuals to one component of their body and said ‘This is all that females are worth.’ I absolutely hate that. I dislike the feeling of male power and occupation at the heart of that design.”
With a visibility in 67 countries and still expanding, TENGA is well readied to reframe the international conversation around self pleasure. Relocating far from anatomically right models in order to decouple self pleasure from sex is just component of it. The larger objective seems to be to bring the grown-up goods company out of the shadows.
“The entire industry made use of to be underground,” Matsumoto recalls. “The items had no brand, no supplier listed, no duplicate, in an era when everyone was making use of computers, lugging mobile phones, and seeing LCD Televisions.” Matsumoto includes that this is why among the first things he included in his items was a consumer service number. To the president of TENGA, it’s all part of an item’s “branding,” which functions in a similar way to authorizing your name on a product to signify that you intend to take obligation for it. As he placed it: “What is a brand? It’s a promise to society.” For Matsumoto, it’s especially a pledge to keep playing with and enhancing his items, taking after an unexpected business idolizer.
“What I went for from the beginning was to end up being like Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is tasty and trendy. Everybody around the world knows the logo. It’s loved by numerous individuals. And despite having that a person product, they maintain boosting it.” TENGA’s head of state says that’s one of his driving approaches.
However in order to “to produce something that enriches human sexuality,” as Matsumoto placed it, you have to include women in the conversation. Today, TENGA likewise has a line of female-oriented iroha vibes that attend to one more issue that Matsumoto recognized within Japan’s once-broken grown-up items sector: males making and developing “enjoyment products” for females. The results, as he says, are products “loaded with male ego” and “huge, large, and monstrous items that, according to him, most ladies don’t intend to use.
His solution was to leave the design of the iroha to his female employees, who compose 45 5 % of the firm. For iroha, TENGA developed a devoted development team that obsessed over details guys had actually overlooked in women-oriented grown-up goods like “whether the switch is easy to press with long nails.” The general judgment was that women chosen something that provided manage as opposed to a sensation of being controlled by an equipment. That’s why vibes like TENGA’s iroha mai or iroha TSUKI function much narrower and flexible pointers that make them “easier to put,” Matsumoto states, ending that “I would certainly never ever have thought of this.”
TENGA’s current focus is on couples that goes much past couple satisfaction products. While Matsumoto maintains that masturbation and sex are two different things, one can and often does lead to the various other, which’s where he desires the company to be: at the center of sex, in an educational capability.
Their Seicil internet site is a collaboration with doctor that respond to confidential questions from youngsters on any kind of topic, from self pleasure to security, LGBTQ+ concerns, or even whether high-schoolers can lease rooms at love resorts. TENGA additionally runs a Seicil web site particularly for adults due to the fact that the absence of appropriate sex-related education and learning is unfortunately not a new trouble.
However, possibly somewhat actually for the owner of a masturbatory aid business, among Matsumoto’s biggest success tales is helping bring life to the world. The TENGA GUYS’S LOUPE is a smart device magnifying glass and app that let customers examine their sperm count in the house and obtain guys engaged with their own reproductive health. A couple of years back, Matsumoto was obviously approached by a pair with a youngster that was born because his item alerted them to their fertility issues. They informed him, “Many thanks to you, we had this youngster.” A success without a doubt.
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