Pink Japan: Contemporary Sex Culture

From cuisine, music, fashion, technology to anime, Japan's cultural influences on the West is immense. In many ways the Japanese erotic cultures are also influencing today's Western tastes. Yet the daily realities of Japan's gender relations, sexual habits, sexual consumer culture and gay/lesbian/transgendered world remain hidden to us, creating an aura of mystique. In this funny and insightful talk, join Midori for a double-expatriate's photo tour of Japan's hidden sexual culture today. Midori is a Kyoto born, Japanese-American author and sex educator based in San Francisco. Raised by trail blazing feminist professors in Japan, she's well versed with the contradiction that is 21st Century Japan. Graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in psychology and trained as a sex educator, she possesses a keen insight into culture and sexuality. www.PlanetMidori.com

"Midori's Pink Japan presentation was a perfect fit for the Center for Sex & Culture: full of detailed information about sexuality in contemporary Japan that we wouldn't get anywhere else, through the unique lens of Midori's own interests, expertise, and bi-cultural history. It's an engaging and informational show." -- Carol Queen, Ph.D. Director, Center for Sex & Culture, www.sexandculture.org

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Midori is an author, human sexuality educator and artist recognized for her sex-positive informative classes for the general public as well as academic and artistic analysis of complex contemporary human sexual expression and culture.

Native of Tokyo and now residing in San Francisco, Midori ongoingly documents a variety of Japanese people in their private lives, clubs, at work, at parties to create an interactive slide show and lecture that explores various sexual subcultures of Japan.

This two- hour presentation includes a slideshow and lecture format presentation with time for Q and A. With the current popularity of Japanese fashion, pop culture, comics and anime, this unusual excursion into widely
romanticized but rarely seen underworld of gender and sexual variance will interest scholars focusing on psychology, anthropology, gender studies, sociology, Asian studies, sexology and health

Midori will guide attendees on her photographic tour of of
-- Mainstream Japan's media focus on sex, fashion, sexuality
-- Western interpretation of Japan and neo-Orientalist trends
-- Living history and future of Japan's gender roles and definitions
-- Japan's health education campaigns and regulations of health products
-- Japan's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered nightlife
-- Japanese sexual consumer culture including its thriving queer and
straight and sex industry/ pornographic media
-- Japan's social sex scene including clubs and sex/fetish parties

More about Midori
Author of "Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage", "Wild Side Sex", and contributor of countless regular articles in various media, Midori travels the extensively presenting to universities, groups and media. She is known for her humanistic, humorous and warm classes that help people to enhance their intimate lives, improve communications in relationship, encourage self discovery and personal growth. Her weekend intensive, Forte Femme, aimed at empowerment and sexual self awareness for women has been hit for years.

Born in Japan and raised in a feminist intellectual Tokyo household, she served in the US Army while earning her psychology degree from University of California, Berkeley.

Numerous years as a grassroots sexuality and risk reduction educator in San Francisco combines with her curiosity and explorations into the post modern feminist and sex positive movement, completing the dynamic blend of experiences that give her such breadth and depth of knowledge in human erotic expression.

Midori has presented at U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, Institute for Human Sexuality (San Francisco), Museum of Sex (New York), California State University, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Toronto, Northridge, University of Houston, University of Maryland, UC Santa Cruz, San Francisco Stop AIDS Project, University of Winnipeg, Babington House (Bath, UK), Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, Good Vibrations, and more.

Her writings and contributions have appeared in: Men's Health UK, Wired, Mademoiselle, Esquire UK, Sojourner (US), Playboy (US and abroad), Glamour, San Francisco Chronicle, Village Voice (New York), CarnalNation.com, SexIs.com and other publications as well as a college human sexuality textbook. She is currently working on several books.

Midori has also appeared on several television and Radio programs including: HBO, Playboy, Canadian Broadcasting, and numerous others.