There's an unusual social problem in Japan: a growing group of middle-aged men who seem unable to lose their virginity. The efforts to help this population include a special course, with nude figure drawing sessions designed to familiarize them with the female form.
The classes are part of the Virgin Academia, run by Shingo Sakatsume. The correspondence course comes with a 100-page textbook, Virgin Breaker!, and runs for a full year, with participants keeping a counselor apprised of their progress in their efforts to meet women.
AFP reports that a National Institute of Population and Social Security Research survey from 2010 found that one in four single Japanese men in their 30s had never had sex. This group has become known as yaramisos, and has seen an influx of growth over the past two decades, as the country's economy has struggled.
"Many men seem to have lost confidence as they've lost their economic muscle," matchmaker Yoko Itamoto told AFP. Another factor is the decline of arranged marriages—without them, some men, unprepared for the realities of adulthood, founder in their efforts to forge romantic relationships.
"I think that we should approach the growing number of 'unwilling virgins' (people who want to have sex but aren't able to) as a social problem and one of the reasons that Japanese people avoid marriage or marry late," wrote Sakatsume for Ignition. "The phenomenon also influences our country's declining birth rate."
Sakatsume sees Japan as a place of contradiction, where sexual imagery is widely found, but no one actually wants to talk about sex—and a woman can be arrested for making art based on her vagina.
The figure drawing sessions, which take place every other month in Tokyo, allows the yaramiso to encounter a naked woman in a neutral environment, free of romance and pressure to perform sexually.
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Shingo Sakatsume with the Virgin Academia textbook. Photo: courtesy Shingo Sakatsume.
"The first time I did this, in autumn last year, oh . . . I was so amazed. Their bodies are incredibly beautiful," said 41-year-old Virgin Academia student Takashi Sakai to AFP. "One thing I learned is that there are many different shapes of breasts and even genitals."
Should the participants suddenly find themselves in an intimate situation, the hope is that the classes will have prepared them for the sight of the naked female body.
The goal of the course, according to Sakatsume, is that "when they finally meet that special someone, they'll be able to build a relationship of mutual trust and make their first time a joyful occasion."
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This circa 1800 painting will go down in history as "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art -- thought to be at least one of the first explicit depictions of female pubic hair. At the time of its creation, the Catholic Church banned the display of artistic nudes, so Goya's nude woman and its more modest counterpart, "The Clothed Maja," were never exhibited publicly during the artist's lifetime.
Katsushika Hokusai's "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife"
There's almost no ambiguity regarding the erotic nature of this painting. The print -- a perfect example of Japanese shunga art -- depicts a fisherman's wife deriving pleasure from a rather unique encounter with an octopus. But do you recognize the artist's name? Yes, the man behind "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" had more than landscape likenesses up his sleeve.
Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights"
Ok, so you may associate "The Garden of Earthly Delights" with its array of terrifying, otherworldly creatures, but the painting has its fair share of sensual details. Dating from between 1490 and 1510, the work plays host to a whole carnival of sins, including the acts in the image above, in which nude men and women are seen frolicking with each other, horses, birds, mermaids, plants... you name it. Writer Laurinda S. Dixon described it as teeming with "a certain adolescent sexual curiosity."
Paul Cezanne's "Seven Bathers"
Cezanne is well known for his various images of nude bathers, many of whom were women. "Seven bathers," however, portrays the figures of nude men -- though some are rather androgynously rendered. This scene of beautifully crafted male bodies is surely not the most erotic of subject matter, but the ways in which the artist toyed with classical representations of the body and the relationship between the viewer's gaze and nakedness makes for a borderline erotic aesthetic. It is assumed that Cezanne, due to a lack of available models, painted this from memory or imagination.
Titian's "Venus of Urbino"
Mark Twain once called Titian's Venus "the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses." With her unabashed nudity and strong gaze into the viewers' eyes, the nude female in this 1538 work of art is undeniably erotic.
Gustav Klimt's "Frau bei der Selbstbefriedigung"
Klimt, the Austrian symbolist painter with a penchant for gilded canvases, brought you uber-famous works like "The Kiss" and his portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. While those images, not to mention the many nude figures that populate his other paintings, exude sensuality, there's nothing quite as erotic as "Frau bei der Selbstbefriedigung."
Peter Paul Rubens's copy of Michelangelo's "Leda and the Swan"
For early 17th century audiences, it was likely more acceptable for a woman to be shown engaging in explicit acts with a bird than with an actual human being. Hence, "Leda and the Swan," based on the Greek myth in which Zeus takes the form of a swan and "seduces" a woman named Leda. Artists like Cesare da Sesto and Paul Cezanna also chose the crude story as inspiration for paintings.
Miyagawa Isshō's "Spring Pastimes"
Created in 1750, this shunga scroll depicts a tryst between two men, one likely a samurai and the other a kabuki actor taking on a sexualized female role.
Édouard Manet's "Olympia"
Look familiar? Manet's 1863 painting is based roughly on Titian's "Venus" and Goya's "Nude Maja." According to accounts from writer Antonin Proust, the painting of a prostitute was so scandalous that "only the precautions taken by the administration prevented the painting being punctured and torn" at its debut exhibition.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard's "The Swing"
This Rococo masterpiece from 1767 is full of symbolism, all of which centers on a young woman's extramarital affair. See that man hidden in the bushes on the left side of the canvas? He's not only on the receiving end of that kicked-off shoe, he's also getting quite a peek up the woman's dress. Erotic? Maybe. We'd settle for 18th century creepy.
Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon)"
Picasso's famous Primitivist painting portrays five nude prostitutes allegedly from a brothel in Barcelona. With their unconventional female forms and relentless gazes, the image is a proto-Cubist version of erotica.
Egon Schiele's "Friendship"
Despite the title, there's a underlying sense of sexuality in Schiele's depiction of two naked individuals, embracing in a twist of line and form reminiscent of the great Austrian painter's intense figurative works.
Diego Velázquez's "Rokeby Venus"
Call it "The Toilet of Venus," "Venus at her Mirror," "Venus and Cupid," or "La Venus del Espejo," Velázquez's nude painting shows a woman deriving pleasure from the site of her own naked self. For a painting made between 1647 and 1651 -- a time period marked by the Spanish public's disdain for naked bodies in art -- the work was on the salacious side. (In case you were wondering, Titian and Rubens also made their own versions of Venus at a mirror.)
Gustave Courbet's "L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World)"
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