Aikido AV

Still on the topic of Aikido for this week (In this case AV refers to "Adult Video" and not "Audio-visual."), and will return  to Chinese culture and internal martial arts topics in March. The genesis of this post was really a combination of two things that I had read.  One was a column in Aikiweb discussing Aikido being featured in manga (Japanese comics) and the fact that I was reading a number of articles recently on how porn has infiltrated popular culture and many of its negative effects, such as tweens dressed in sexually revealing outfits, the commodification of sex, sexual fantasies based on pornography that are fueled by aggression, and addicted young males forming new pathways in the brain from watching too much porn due to neuro-plasticity. These were highlighted in a recent book "Pornland", How Porn has hijacked our sexuality by Gail Dines.

What was most interesting to me was the comment "the reality of the pornography industry is ‘lost in the maze of postmodern terminology and intellectual games." This reference to postmodernism was somehow very apt to describe the industry which seems to be able to assimilate and sexualize almost everything that it comes into contact with. It is a bit like infantile potty humor taken to the extreme, where any long thin object can be likened to a phallus, for example. So we have all sorts of everyday situations which have become fetishized, the hospital, school, skiing, massage, the beach, spoofs of various popular movies (Edward Penishands, etc.) and novels (the fan novels written for Harry Potter and Twilight are good examples of this) and for every fetish there seems to be a dedicated website. 

So it was no surprise to me that Japan, which has the biggest pornographic industry in the world, has also been able to subvert the martial arts. A simple google search will bring up karate, kendo, judo and even Aikido. The premise always seems to be quite similar, where the young lady who holds a black belt in the given discipline goes against a series of opponents with the prospect of a monetary prize at the end of running a gauntlet of opponents. However if she loses she consents to be sexually assaulted by her opponents, which is the inevitable result (otherwise no one would buy the DVD). Some sample covers - that of the DVD above, which reads - young girl who can throw opponents in the air - 15 years Aikido experience! Naked Aikido!  or the Kendo one - female Kendoka versus Rapist!

To be honest, it is with a sense of fatalism that I approach this topic, that is is against the budo spirit goes without being said, but there is not much that can be done but perhaps laugh at the industry's inventiveness. But one has to also remember that the samurai were not always the refined individuals as portrayed in classical literature, but were oftentimes rampaging soldiers butchering and raping and living off the land and this would definitely have appealed to them. Interested to see if my readers have any opinions on the matter.