Involuntary consent: The illusion of choice in Japan's adult video industry By Akiko Takeyama. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2023. 252 pp.

Japan adult video (JAV) is a euphemism for pornographic film made in Japan. The “illusion of choice” arises from the “involuntary consent” actresses in these films yield; they do so in the space between what they say they will do in the contracts they sign, and the range of sex acts they end up performing in the videos. Actresses are said to give their consent to acts they would prefer not to perform professionally, but they often yield to the importunity of film directors because they do not fully realize that the contracts they sign are unenforceable. They find it hard to say no for other cultural reasons as well, as detailed by author Akiko Takeyama. The producers of JAV, on the other hand, know well that they cannot take these contracts to court, but they drive a hard bargain, pushing actresses to the limits of what they are willing to do and maybe then some. What prevents the actresses from pushing back just as hard is the double standard, still alive and flourishing in Japan as in perhaps few other cultures. Actresses are young and inexperienced, and few stay long in an industry that turns over about two-thirds of them annually (p. 140). Actresses fear most having their identities revealed to their personal circles of family, relatives, friends, and coworkers outside the JAV industry. The money varies by an actress's status, whether she is a star, backup actress, or casual performer. AV work, for women, is organized much like all work available to them, except that sex can never be made respectable and remains stigmatizing. Like all good ethnography, Involuntary Consent gravitates toward the contradictions in cultural practices that soon become apparent to the ethnographer even when they do not rise to the level of full awareness among the people whose lives they constitute. The JAV actresses’ contract—signed without really knowing what is entailed, but unenforceable in court anyway—must be understood as a symbol that stands most broadly for the deep complications of relationships, which makes this industry entirely a part of Japanese culture and society. Takeyama—a Japanese anthropologist, an American university professor, and a woman—has given us a book of economic anthropology, not art or sex, that examines the institutional structure of a decreasingly profitable industry that now no longer monopolizes the distribution of its final product. More fundamentally, the economics of the Japan's AV industry is always as precarious as the work of its stars, hinging on the contradictory reality of two ideas in Japan: freedom of expression and sex work, the first constitutionally affirmed and the second legally forbidden. JAV sex work is not policed within labor law. Takeyama's data are primarily conversations with participants in the industry. Who can imagine, after all, what “participant observation” would be in such a fieldwork setting? Entirely jargon free, this book can be read by anyone; no background in anthropology or Japanese studies is required. After the introductory chapter on the contradictions of contract in conception and in practice in this industry, chapter 2 presents more nuanced and varied voices of actresses. Chapter 3 introduces the agents who recruit newcomers—often with just single-sheet handouts in Tokyo train stations—and sign them to contracts. Chapter 4 brings in the men who run the industry (film directors, producers, and studio executives): “There are literally zero women at the leadership level of decision making for the industry” (p. 155). The final chapter reports the views of consumers, single men in their 30s and 40s, who are represented as occupying a gendered space in the Japanese labor force parallel to the JAV world. These are the first generation of men to find themselves precariously employed and no longer guaranteed the lifetime employment that formerly characterized Japan's postwar labor practices. These men have enough money to sustain the JAV industry but not nearly enough to start a stable family. Their favored actresses are cast in the image of women they would want to marry. Events are staged at which fans can meet their favorites, usually young women who project cheerful innocence. The narratives that make JAV unique in the global pornography market explore the range of possibilities for sex within familial relationships. Everyone in Japan wants to get married, but more and more women cannot find men to provide them the households they envision now that so many men lack the stable employment that would support such households, one result of Japan's sharp, already generation-old, neoliberal turn. This reality has deep national effects: the number of babies born in Japan totaled 758,631 in 2023, hitting a record low for the eighth straight year and representing just half the figure of some 1.5 million born in 1983, shortly after the economic “bubble” burst. The 2023 figure declined by 5.1 percent from the 2022 total of 799,728 births, the largest-ever margin of decline. Virtually no children are born outside marriage in Japan. The country accepts no immigrants, and its population continues to contract. Many women “choose” AV performance because it is more lucrative and rewarding than other work; others feel it is a stepping stone leading to other business opportunities. In this context, AV work becomes the “best” option even though it comes with a greater risk of identity reveal and social discrimination in today's digital age. (p. 197)