In Japan acts that the law and society don't allow in fact, such as sadomasochism, is allowed in fantasy. Japanese customers can pay to sexually `harass' prostitutes dressed as secretaries.

If they've got the yen they can be whipped or whip, shackled or shackle, etc. Japanese comics and cartoons are notorious for their kinky sex.

Fantasy is accepted as fantasy and a psychological relief, not as the moral and legal equivalent of the real thing, as in our culture, where the do-gooders want people thrown in jail just for having illegal desires.

Where the feminist slogan is "Pornography is the theory, rape the practice." If that were true Japan would be the most sexually violent country in the world instead of the safest.

If the Western ideologies of Christianity and Freud haven't affected Japan much (Although it should be noted that Japan is far less permissive now than in the past, thanks to pressure from us oh so enlightened Westerners who think we know better than them.), another imported sexually repressive ideology has warped China and Indochina Marxism.

I have no direct experience on this, but reports from those countries do indicate that their sex industries are being resurrected along with the opening up of their economies to capitalism.

However, the governments are still strongly authoritarian and sex for pay is semiunderground and still subject to periodic repression.

Also, it should be noted that most other Asian countries do repress pornography and many alternative sexualities.

Some of this is due to another Western ideology, Islam. Some of it is due to a natural reluctance to undermine the status quo and some of it is in reaction to Western pressure.

I believe most of Asian sexual repression is not Puritanism in the same sense as it means to us (A puritan is anyone who hates the thought that someone else is having a good time.).

At root it is considered a practical way to keep men's minds on their duty to support their wives and children. Sexual acts and desires outside marriage are not evil or dirty, as we think of them, but they threaten the family and therefore society.

I believe Asian authoritarian governments from Singapore to Beijing look upon the control of sex in practical, not moral terms as religious fundamentalists in the US do.

This raises an interesting speculation. Perhaps Japan is the most `liberal' country in Asia in this regard because it's also the most prosperous, even during the recession, and so men can support their families and still afford to have girlfriends, boyfriends, etc.

Sexual expression may become officially freer in other countries as their economies improve and more Asian men can therefore afford to both support their families and indulge their outside desires.

Certainly it's no secret that businessmen from other Asian countries are more active as sex tourists in Thailand and The Philippines than Americans and Europeans except to the Western media and Western do-gooder fascists.

Let me summarize. Asians do not believe that something so natural as sex is in and of itself `sinful.' Sin is a foreign concept to them.

Sex is recognized as natural and highly important, and therefore sexual behavior must be controlled for the sake of social cohesion, to keep on producing rice and babies. It doesn't really matter who you have sex with or how, as long as the social order is maintained.

This does amount to sexual repression for women, it must be admitted. `Good' girls don't have sex before marriage or with any man besides their husband after marriage.

Men are granted all the freedom they can afford to discretely get away with.