"Men have become the tools of their tools." - Henry David Thoreau

***

I was very disappointed to learn that the WaiWai column in Mainichi Daily News (somehow I keep misspelling it as "Manichi") was:

"For years... translating bizarre stories from Japan’s least credible tabloid magazines and publishing them as news articles in a special column called WaiWai. The wacky stories of perversion and vice... caused stupid and false information about Japan to spread around the world, [leading it to be known as] a wacky land full of twisted perverts, bizarre forms of prostitution, and sex dolls [Ed: But it is what.]"

This means that it is very likely that stories I have linked to in the past about, off the top of my head, a girl having a light bulb shatter after it was shoved up her vagina, a sex version of Russian Roulette where they didn't use condoms and one girl carried around a plastic coffee spoon (just in case), Vaginal Ejaculation Disorder and "The University of Tokyo Virgin Inspection: Painful Entry through the 'Red Gate'" are mostly or totally fabricated, picked up as they were from tabloids (more like porn magazines, probably) and even enhanced.

But then, given that this is the place where an unemployed man disguised himself as a schoolgirl to rob women, people were arrested for filming a porn movie in McDonalds, U15 idols is a big business opportunity and we have more and more elderly porn; which houses the “Sexual Harassment Corporation” (where you can pay to molest an office lady in a fake office, or grope girls on a fake train); and where I saw a train cafe (no, I don't think it was this [SFW] one), those stories weren't *that* far off the mark. Oh, and don't forget the guy with 100 sex dolls.

Mainichi is deeply sorry over all this (notice that "inappropriate content" and "incorrect information" are separately classified). Probably because people are so pissed off they issue death threats (and claim, implausibly, that the site led to crimes against Japanese women abroad).

Happily, you can still find reference to old WaiWai news on this forum where, as of this post, you can read extracts from articles such as:

Japanese Housewives Flock To Thailand for Sex
Fast food sends schoolgirls into sexual feeding frenzy
Randy young couples play scrub-a-dub at rural hot springs
Early blossoms pop cherry-loving fun

(Finding the actual articles isn't a problem - people repost them after going wtf; what is hard is knowing what to look for)

For more deliciousness, here are the headlines from April 2003 (sadly not all the articles have been reposted online):

April 30 Grotesque gropers gang up to form online orgy teams
April 29 Pudgy porkers pare pounds with new wanker's diet
April 28 Porno overload leaves Japanese jerkers drained dry
April 27 Doctor evil sharpens scalpel on women under anesthesia
April 26 Cybersex stripoff reveals naked truth
April 25 Tour girls take detour up back alleys
April 24 Net savvy raises your stake playing 'hide the sausage'
April 23 The Great Sasuke grapples with well hung imposter
April 22 Torturer on the prowl in feline friendly ward
April 21 Cherry tree lovers cut up over stripped sakura
Bad-boy of kiddie TV rises to cultural icon
April 20 Good-girls-gone-bad tell tricks that flicked their sexual switch
April 19 Discount shops dishin' out dirt-cheap dirty flicks
April 18 Net chat chaps leave ladies blushing
April 17 Hospital hookers hearten horny VIP patients
April 16 Golden feces wipes smile on Japanese faces
April 15 Sexless marriages -- selfishness or individualism?
April 14 Sweetners sink sperm counts to sour levels
April 13 Females fight to stay afloat as dire straits deepen
April 12 Sneaky women focusing on filthy films
April 11 Corporations allowed to exploit dirty beaches by calling them names
April 10 The honorable guide to suicide
April 9 Dad's bad gags stand damn grand as brands
April 8 Seeing the signs that your dame's about to demand a divorce
April 7 Astro Boy is born!
April 6 Foolish fisherman feasts on fugu for fatal last supper
April 5 War makes it rough for a sudsy rub 'n tug
April 4 Schoolgirls' decade of decadence: From floozies to free rides
April 3 Schoolgirls' decade of decadence:Girls go from boom to boom-boom
April 2 Schoolgirls' decade of decadence: panty sales have punters panting
April 1 Fear the future? Go forth and multiply!

With the exception of the story about Japanese tourists hunting children in Ecuador with rifles ("Sex, rape & slaves inserted in sick holiday menu"; because of what happened to tourists attacked in Guatamela because people thought they were kidney thieves), I don't see anything wrong with this version of the World Weekly News (as long as the provenance and likely truthfulness of the stories is properly described).

I'm very happy because I hit upon an archive of old articles, which I won't share here. Hurr hurr. Stippy.com also has a smaller archive. Another place with links to a few old articles. More headlines.

And for new stuff you can always visit the Asian Sex Gazette's Japanese News section (too bad most of the articles are old).


Addendum: Wai oh why? | FCCJ: The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan

"WaiWai introduced a system called “People’s Pick” that allowed readers to vote for one of 10 headlines from that week’s tabloid stories that they would most like to see translated in full. No gold stars for guessing the results of this experiment in interactive journalism – any headlines that carried even a hint of sex were the overwhelming choice, week after week.

WaiWai translations came to lean increasingly toward sex, with occasional forays into crime, and whatever else was out there. That is not to say it was without redeeming features; the column was highly entertaining, filled with humorous word plays and asides, while giving an insight into some of the excesses of Japanese popular journalism. It was also very popular, attracting a lot of traffic to its pages, and thus the advertising required to keep the online edition viable...

Sakurai, while professing to have been appalled at the contents of recent WaiWai columns, makes no bones about the fact that this was an opportunity to attack the Mainichi, whose liberal politics he despises. Asked why the Asahi’s name was invoked at the demonstration, he explains: “They’re both the same. I’d enjoy it if the Mainichi and Asahi went bankrupt. The left here is different from the left in other countries, because they hate Japan. The Mainichi has Korean journalists you know, who hate the emperor. That’s why we call it the Han-nichi.”...

“Back in the earlier days of WaiWai we followed trends in Japanese society through summarizing the tabloid weeklies,” suggests one of the contributors from those days. “It was a form of social anthropology.” While those lofty ideals were certainly lost in recent years, the column did deliver what readers repeatedly requested when given the opportunity to opine. When this point is put to Sakurai, he responds, smirking: “Well, I suppose men in every country like that kind of stuff.”...

It would be a shame to say goodbye to WaiWai without recalling at least one of its infamous stories in a little more detail. One, which combined the elements of humor, debauchery and a total lack of credibility, was the tale of fishermen having their way with various creatures of the ocean. Originally told by comedian Taro Makeburu, a former fisherman, to a Jitsuwa Knuckles columnist, it contained some of the following pearls:

“Almost everybody in the fishing business has had sex with a manta at some point,” Makeburu asserts.

Yep. After all, fisherman out on ships spend a loooonggg time at sea without ever encountering a woman and well, let‘s face it, they can get pretty horny. Even desperate enough to do it with a manta. Right?

“Nah,” shrugs Makeburu. “Coastal fishermen poke them too.”

Apparently it's a ritual of manhood, done out of recognition of the dangers of life
on the sea.

And of course, there's the matter of protocol. To wit, the ship‘s captain, if he so chooses, is entitled to go first… if the captain had an STD, wouldn't the other crew members who had sex with the manta contract it too?

“That‘s right,” grins Makeburu. “So some guys slip on condoms before they do it. Once I came down with the clap. But we were in port around that time and I did it with a woman, so I don't have any way of knowing if I picked it up from her, or from the manta.”

Is it common, then, for marine students to lose their virginity to a manta?

"Well, no, actually it‘s more common for them to lose it to a moray eel,” he confides.

Apparently once out of the water a moray becomes less aggressive. So you can force its mouth open with your hands, and then stick in your cock and let it chew on your chin-chin.

Of course you can‘t actually call that sex either; it‘s only oral sex. Or as an Italian fisherman might croon, “That's a moray!”"


Even better, they provide a link to The Tokyo Reporter, which has a Japanese Smut Portal! We can get trashy stories again, woo hoo!

[Addendum: Another thing to try is googling the names of the tabloids, like "Shukan Taishu", "Nikkan Gendai", "Jitsuwa Taiho", "Shukan Shincho", "Shukan Asahi", "Jitsuwa Knuckles", "Shukan Gendai", "Cyzo", "Spa!" (you need to add "tabloid" or something similar though), to find stories in English.

The first gives the best results.]