Masanobu starts the day with a two hour training in the livingroom

December 23, 2011 5:11 AM

A brief interview with the world's champion masturbator. (Not graphic, but NWS.)

Metropolis TV is "a globally produced website and TV show initiated by Dutch public service broadcaster VPRO and Dutch NGO Hivos."

This week's episode focuses on masturbation, with segments including:

* Buying porn in Iraq
* A masturbation tutor
* Non-food uses for papaya

More segments, and the full episode, at the Metropolis TV masturbation mini-site.

posted by seanmpuckett (66 comments total)

....Is this a speed contest or an endurance one?...
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:17 AM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

If that's not the world's most understanding girlfriend I don't know who is.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:20 AM on December 23, 2011 [8 favorites]

"Hey, where were you last week?"

"In a masturbation contest."

"Huh?, did you win?"

"Nah, I came in second."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:21 AM on December 23, 2011 [25 favorites]

If someone had told me as a teenager that you could be a professional masturbator, the entire course of my life would have been transformed. I loved how matter of fact he was about it, and how his girlfriend compared it to her sewing hobby.
posted by Forktine at 5:28 AM on December 23, 2011 [9 favorites]

"Hey, where were you last week?"

"In a masturbation contest."

"Huh?, did you win?"

"I came first"

...."That's what she said!!!!!"
posted by BozoBurgerBonanza at 5:29 AM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Anybody notice the cat at 1:22?
posted by punkfloyd at 5:33 AM on December 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

champion? pffft...
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:34 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yes; the part of the video where his cat looks like he's about to jump into his lap reminded me of that old childhood joke about the book titled Don't Squat Naked Near Your Cat, by Claude Balls.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:35 AM on December 23, 2011 [14 favorites]

I was most struck by the fact that both "Masturbation" and "Shaving Cream" seem to be examples of Gairaigo (borrowed words).

Surely both of these weren't recent cultural imports to Japan?
posted by ShutterBun at 5:41 AM on December 23, 2011

You know, its great that this man has found his passion, a partner that supports that passion, and a way to potentially turn that passion into a career. Isn't this exactly what we all dream of?

(masturbation optional)
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:43 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

I never really thought of it as the sort of thing you practiced so you could get better at it. I mean, who first thought "I'm pretty damned good at this; I bet I could beat everyone else at it. Heh heh heh, I said 'beat." ?
posted by Mooski at 6:04 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

I was more interested in what the girlfriend was cooking for breakfast. That looked yummy.
posted by Seymour Zamboni at 6:04 AM on December 23, 2011

I envision the competition like Fred Savages star turn in The Wizard.
posted by dr_dank at 6:14 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'll be impressed once it becomes and Olympic sport.
posted by ob at 6:25 AM on December 23, 2011

You know, its great that this man has found his passion, a partner that supports that passion, and a way to potentially turn that passion into a career. Isn't this exactly what we all dream of?

(masturbation optional)

I've never found that to be the case.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:33 AM on December 23, 2011

I'll be impressed once it becomes and Olympic sport.

Javelin Toss.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:35 AM on December 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

Narrator: This is the trophy he won

(Masanobu shows a hand-shaped trophy)

Masanobu: It has this shape because it's something we do with our hand.

Noted.
posted by PlusDistance at 6:39 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

In a circle jerk, a true competitor comes in first and third.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 6:42 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Am I the only one not impressed by this guy?

She cooks dinner while he lays down a towel on the living room floor and masturbates. And then he says this while perusing anime porn, "A real woman has a certain smell of course and gets dirty... and there's anime: pretty and clean." Which to me explains what he says in the beginning about his girlfriend, "She isn't that interested in sex."

Girlfriend, DTMFA.
posted by Houstonian at 6:44 AM on December 23, 2011 [5 favorites]

....Is this a speed contest or an endurance one?...

aesthetics, like ice dancing.
posted by HumanComplex at 6:47 AM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

The fact that my first instinct here is to write a long, simultaneously self-effacing and braggy comment full of sad and amusing details makes me think I've gotten way, way too free with my private life. That said, I'm pleased with the cultural change that's taken place in the last decades.

Just seventeen years ago, when I was in my last semester and had a couple of credits left to kill, I took a course on human sexuality because it had occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea what the topology of a woman's genitals was like, and I like to be fully informed, even about things that have no practical application to me.

"Now, when it comes to cultural mores and taboos, we're still immersed," said my professor, speaking in the lecture hall. "For instance, how many of you have masturbated today?"

I had, so I raised my hand. A titter swept the room and I turned back, my arm limply held aloft, to see that I did, in fact, have the only raised hand in the class. I grimaced, wondering if I should snatch my hand back or let it sort of wither, in that drooping pulsation of a dick settling back into its regular state, but the professor just chuckled.

"See, here's the problem. I've got one honest guy in the room and about a hundred and forty liars."

Everyone laughed, but it would be years before people quit pretending that masturbation was a childish thing they'd since put away, if they'd even ever done it.

As an adolescent, though, I knew why you'd feel ashamed.

At a sleepover with a friend, I'd gotten into one of those moods, and as we sat in the dark, talking the way you do as your consciousness slips sideways from you, the unheard sound of Bolero started playing in my head and I decided to introduce my friend to a new concept I'd discovered.

"What's masturbation, anyway?" he asked, and I started to spin a wild tale. Sadly, I'd mixed up a bit of my practical, empirical experience with lectures from our first elementary school sex ed classes, and "masturbation" and "menstruation" sound awfully similar, so some details may have been blurred and combined in a nightmare mutation involving ovum, blood, and wicked strokin'.

I was so close to my target when the door flung open, and my friend's gigantic patrician mother burst in.

"What is it, hon?" his father asked from the other room.

"Joseph is giving Matthew a primer on masturbation," she said, "and he's not doing it with any degree of precision! Come along, Matt, you're going to stay with us tonight."

"Umm, wait," my friend stalled.

"What's the hold-up?"

"Uh, my pants fell off."

Suddenly, it was all over. I retreated into my sleeping bag and zipped it all the way closed, like a new amniotic sac, where I could hide out until the end of the world. The shame, the utter horrifying embarrassment—I could actually die from this.

By morning, I almost had. It was so hot in there I couldn't breathe. Soaked with sweat, I was overheated to the verge of brain death, but I was going to be goddamned if I would ever unzip the bag and rejoin the world. Time slowed to a crawl, so leisurely in its passage that I could feel the grains of quantized spacetime dribbling over the shells of the turtles on turtles on turtles all the way down that lie under the curve of the Earth.

Finally, given the choice between death and social death, I surrendered, climbed out of my sleeping bag, and maintained a bright red all-over blush until well after I'd been picked up by my mother.

"How was your sleepover?" she asked as I sat back, enjoying the splendid cold touch of the oxblood colored vinyl orthopedic seats in our old Volvo sedan.

"Nothin'," I said. "It was fine."

Times are so different now, and I've become a bit of a pig.

Sitting in Veniero's in the late summer of 2009 with a brilliant and voluptuous friend and enjoying cappuccinos and rum babas and a wonderful afternoon to celebrate after a difficult installation at Bergdorf's, I started to briefly excuse myself.

"I'm going to jerk off in the bathroom now. Be back in a minute," I said.

"What? You are so gross. Wait, are you really? Why?"

"Have you been in there yet? The bathrooms here are like nirvana for a gay narcissist."

"The mirrors?"

"Yeah, it's like an infinite circle-jerk with men who don't get on my nerves."

"And you're going to leave me sitting out here drinking coffee while you do that?"

"Most definitely. You're welcome to come watch."

"Jesus, Joe. Umm...what?"

"Just kidding, it's too small in there. You'd get me banned. You can smell my hand afterward if you like. You should do it. How long does it take for women?"

"You'd need another cup of coffee."

"And a sfogliatelle. I'd need one of those, too," I said. "Be right back."

It seems like whole millennia of shame are finally fading, burned out in the searing broadband glare of the internet, where we swiftly find out how ubiquitous our secret embarrassments really are, and how pointless it's been to hide out, zipped into our sleeping bags, for all our lives. When upright citizens stand up and cheer for teams of trained drug-fueled monsters fighting for the pleasure of secretive billionaires on fields of close-cropped grass painted with advertising, or where we still think the goal is to be better than those around us, masturbation is such a natural, celebratory thing by comparison. In the presence of my holy-roller relatives, I keep cool, but elsewhere, well, when you have a talent—

"See, you're fucking with me. No way did you finish that fast," my friend said, stirring her coffee in a purposeful little gesture of impatience.

"Sure," I said, and stuck out my hand, with my thumb and forefinger spread. She smirked, wrinkled her nose, and shook her head. "No? Well, sometimes you take the scenic route, and sometimes you take the express train."

"Wait, you're not left-handed, anyway."

"Yeah, I'm a little tired of my right hand. Too adept."

"You're a mess, Joe."

"That's what they tell me."

The world gets smaller and more open every day. When we reserve shame for shameful things—for crime and cruelty and the parasitic abuse of the innocent and the powerless—it regains its use as a tool. Cut the fangs from the maws of the moralistic, of all the manipulators who kept us shamed and shaking before the Lord, and soon enough, we can walk the streets and be gay, be different, and be what we're meant to be.

Maybe I accord a lot of power to jerking off, but it is quite a nice diversion, actually.
posted by sonascope at 6:50 AM on December 23, 2011 [64 favorites]

[more inside]

Um, yeah ... I'll bet.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:54 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

OTOH (the left one!) from a recent b3ta QOTW for "weird rituals".


Kid in our class at school used to seemingly randomly go to various girls in the class at morning registration, and just say 'Thank you' to them, and wander off. Just one each day, some days he wouldn't do it at all.

Occasionally he'd do it to the teacher.

He then rather stupidly admitted to one of his friends that in fact that was the person he had been thinking about when he had a wank the previous night. This took about a nanosecond to go round the whole school, and as of the second year of college 5 years later was pretty much still the leading topic of conversation.
posted by lalochezia at 7:29 AM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Guys who jerk off all the time are miserable at sex with other people.
posted by desjardins at 7:39 AM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

My roommate in college was in a masturbation contest. He's a bit of an over-achiever. He came in first, third, sixth, and ninth.
posted by Billiken at 7:39 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

desjardins: “Guys who jerk off all the time are miserable at sex with other people.”

Yeah, women who masturbate too much are pretty awful in bed, too. I think it has something to do with the way they're wasting their vital essence or something.

Yes, I'm being ironic.
posted by koeselitz at 7:43 AM on December 23, 2011 [12 favorites]

Well, I suppose I shouldn't make such a broad statement since I haven't slept with every compulsive masturbator. But the ones I have slept with got so used to their own ... methods that they were unable to perform with another person. One of those guys is now in his 40s and can't keep a relationship because he can't orgasm with anyone but himself. It's stupid and tragic.
posted by desjardins at 7:48 AM on December 23, 2011

Call me crazy, desjardins, but I have a hunch that the situation is a bit more complex than "is too used to their own nookie style".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:59 AM on December 23, 2011 [9 favorites]

sonascope: " The world gets smaller and more open every day. When we reserve shame for shameful things—for crime and cruelty and the parasitic abuse of the innocent and the powerless—it regains its use as a tool. Cut the fangs from the maws of the moralistic, of all the manipulators who kept us shamed and shaking before the Lord, and soon enough, we can walk the streets and be gay, be different, and be what we're meant to be."

Sorry, but I'm still taking "Don't use the bathroom at Veniero's. Ever." as the most important lesson to be learned from your comment.
posted by zarq at 8:05 AM on December 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

It still doesn't answer the obvious question: What's his record? What sort of contest was it? How big are his calluses?
posted by fungible at 8:11 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Sorry, but I'm still taking "Don't use the bathroom at Veniero's. Ever." as the most important lesson to be learned from your comment.

Really? It's ever so nice, though, and one of the cleaner old-school bathrooms in the city. Is it the metaphysical masturbation vibes that are the issue?
posted by sonascope at 8:12 AM on December 23, 2011

He is good but I am now in training and hope to outdistance if not outclass him..is she is trainer? can I workout without a trainer always close by?
posted by Postroad at 8:13 AM on December 23, 2011

desjardins: “But the ones I have slept with got so used to their own ... methods that they were unable to perform with another person. One of those guys is now in his 40s and can't keep a relationship because he can't orgasm with anyone but himself. It's stupid and tragic.”

Yes, and I know what you mean I think, but we're not talking about excessive masturbation here. We're talking about inability to communicate. Those are two separate things. Yes, lots of incommunicative, somewhat selfish guys masturbate a lot; but that doesn't mean all guys that masturbate a lot are incommunicative or somewhat selfish.

Also, do people really lose partners serially because they can't reach orgasm? I know that can be a difficult point here and there in some relationships, but if someone really claims that it's happened multiple times, to the point where they feel they can't hold on to a relationship at all, my guess would be that something else besides the not-orgasming is going on.
posted by koeselitz at 8:16 AM on December 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

fungible: "How big are his calluses?"

It's not the size of the calluses....
posted by zarq at 8:26 AM on December 23, 2011

I had no idea that Sexy Losers was based on real life.

NSFW, btw
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:29 AM on December 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

sonascope: " Really?

No. I was joking. :)

It's ever so nice, though, and one of the cleaner old-school bathrooms in the city.

Haven't been in, but Veniero's carrot cake is to die for.
posted by zarq at 8:34 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

I wonder if anyone has ever come up with an idea for a location ranking website for public masturbators.

I'm guessing that wouldn't be something your average business would like to see on their Yelp profile: "Hot waiters and waitresses in skimpy outfits. Lovely, soundproofed bathroom stalls. Nice supple leather couches that vibrate. Free hand lotion."
posted by zarq at 8:35 AM on December 23, 2011

Masturbation first became a moral issue in 1722. Seriously!
posted by binturong at 8:39 AM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

FYI, last year on our honeymoon Uncle Ira and I discovered a line of sex toys at Don Quijote in Tokyo that were "celebrity-endorsed" by the world masturbating champion. My mind was blown.

I can't find a listing online, but this blog shows photos of some stuff that's not sex toys but pix of girls in bikinis and... you get the idea (probably SFW).

Flapjax at Midnite, do they still have this kind of thing over there this year, or was that a one-time-only thing, I wonder?
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 8:42 AM on December 23, 2011

I wonder how he claims his DVD purchases/rentals with Japan's equivalent of the IRS? Business deductions?
posted by pjern at 8:56 AM on December 23, 2011

I was going to mention that other Japanese guy who was the world champion hot dog eater and how the two of them could train together but I don't think I will because it would be too offensive.
posted by twoleftfeet at 9:15 AM on December 23, 2011 [5 favorites]

She cooks dinner while he lays down a towel on the living room floor and masturbates. And then he says this while perusing anime porn, "A real woman has a certain smell of course and gets dirty... and there's anime: pretty and clean." Which to me explains what he says in the beginning about his girlfriend, "She isn't that interested in sex."

Girlfriend, DTMFA.

Actually, it sounds like neither one of them likes real sex much, so isn't this kind of a good relationship for them? A woman who really did like sex would be really frustrated by him wanting spank it, while if she were with a dude who wasn't satisfied with masturbation over sex, she would be pressured to have sex all the time.

"Joseph is giving Matthew a primer on masturbation," she said, "and he's not doing it with any degree of precision! Come along, Matt, you're going to stay with us tonight."

hahahahahaha.

Masturbation first became a moral issue in 1722. Seriously!

Well, to be fair people simply didn't write much about taboo subjects much prior to a few hundred years ago, at least I don't think so. We only know that the word 'fuck' existed in 1475 due to an encoded message.

Also, looking up the link I discovered the word 'occupy' originally meant 'have sexual intercourse with', with the same connotation as 'fuck'. Occupy Wallstreet indeed.
posted by delmoi at 9:21 AM on December 23, 2011 [6 favorites]

Veniero's carrot cake is to die for

I have yet to find a pastry that they don't do brilliantly, which is why my return trips on Megabus always occasion the carriage of a number of large packages from there. My sister used to live next door to Veniero's in the eighties, which is how I managed to gain twenty pounds in the summer of '84.
posted by sonascope at 9:28 AM on December 23, 2011

"A real woman has a certain smell of course and gets dirty... and there's anime: pretty and clean."

I took this as something of a translation issue, and it actually illuminated for me why people are into the animated porn. I think he means that for some people, and maybe especially in repressed societies, it's easier to look at this cartoon character who isn't real and really does exist only for the purpose of being a sexual object, unlike a real person.
posted by cmoj at 9:47 AM on December 23, 2011

>Well, to be fair people simply didn't write much about taboo subjects much prior to a few hundred years ago, at least I don't think so. We only know that the word 'fuck' existed in 1475 due to an encoded message.<

I just read The Canterbury Tales and I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.
posted by bongo_x at 10:09 AM on December 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

I just read The Canterbury Tales and I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.

I was thinking of the Decameron and Divine Comedy, but yeah, exactly.
posted by The World Famous at 10:55 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Holy crap that video made me incredibly uncomfortable to watch. A metal spatula in a Teflon pan? Why not rip out my heart while you're at it?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:07 AM on December 23, 2011 [20 favorites]

How big are his calluses?

His phallus calluses?
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 11:21 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

....Is this a speed contest or an endurance one?...

Perhaps it's distance.
posted by Daddy-O at 11:36 AM on December 23, 2011

"A real woman has a certain smell of course and gets dirty... and there's anime: pretty and clean."

The Japanese adjective kirei means both "beautiful" and "clean"--I'd bet money that's the word being used here. My understanding is that it connotes not just physical attractiveness but a kind of pristine elegance and dignity.

I've also read that Japanese sexual norms include a shower before and after sex, so possibly the idea of going several rounds with the same woman, if she hasn't bathed in between, is distasteful.

Me, I prefer sex to be messy and inelegant and spontaneous, and I consider the "certain smell" of my lover erotic rather than aversive, but my limited understanding of Japanese culture indicates that that's far from the ideal over there.
posted by milk white peacock at 11:55 AM on December 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

These videos, much like the act itself, are rather banal.
posted by sid at 12:21 PM on December 23, 2011

"Huh?, did you win?"

"Nah, I came in second."

soo...third place?
posted by sexyrobot at 12:23 PM on December 23, 2011

the word 'occupy' originally meant 'have sexual intercourse with', with the same connotation as 'fuck'.

I knew that.
posted by binturong at 1:01 PM on December 23, 2011

Wow, from the general website, the video about the guy in Kenya who teaches people not to masturbate is really something to see. This guy is a victim of the utter stupidity of religious strictures that demonize the body. Sad.
posted by Vibrissae at 1:05 PM on December 23, 2011

For whatever it's worth guys, Dan Savage agrees with desjardins, and often dispenses advice to vary one's masturbation routine, not a use a deathgrip, and not to beat off more than once or twice a day, even when you aren't getting any with a partner. Read his archives.

And, yeah, Mr. 40-and-can't-come-with-a-partner may have some mental or communication issues, or he may be taking hydrocodone, or he may have an abnormal physiology... or he may have just trained his wang to only work under certain circumstances. It does happen.
posted by Leta at 1:34 PM on December 23, 2011

Re: Smell. There is a masturbation aid that addresses this...
posted by CCBC at 1:36 PM on December 23, 2011

Christ, what a jerk.
posted by Mcable at 1:48 PM on December 23, 2011

Competitive masturbation is a form of hand-to-hand combat.
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:37 PM on December 23, 2011

I thought it was hand to gland combat?
posted by Pinback at 3:08 PM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Delmoi: "Also, looking up the link I discovered the word 'occupy' originally meant 'have sexual intercourse with', with the same connotation as 'fuck'. Occupy Wallstreet indeed."

Awesome. It also brings a new meaning to those occasions when your boss calls you in, "if you are not otherwise occupied".
posted by kandinski at 3:28 PM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Am I being narrow-minded to think that this is an incredibly sad relationship, and that it is doomed to end when some horny, unshy girl arrives in his life who looks exactly like one of those girls in the anime porn, and wants to fuck his brains out? I'm predicting that the wife will then be cooking for one and have much more time for sewing.
posted by anothermug at 3:51 PM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

when some horny, unshy girl arrives in his life who looks exactly like one of those girls in the anime porn

AHAHAhaaahahahhaahahahahaha ... ohh, thanks for that. Whew!
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:55 PM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at him. It's just that you just perfectly described the otaku wet dream so perfectly there.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:38 PM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Jerking off as an endurance test? What the fuck is the point of that?
posted by crossoverman at 6:18 PM on December 23, 2011

The point is you get to endorse sex toys in the Japanese equivalent of a narrow, multi-story WalMart and indirectly cause Metafilter to start spewing puns everywhere.

I've just been reminded that the sex toy in question was actually a special Fleshlight that came with a hymen of some kind... wow.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 10:06 PM on December 23, 2011

I see the future here. Maybe Masanobu will be bigger than Miyamoto some day.
posted by christhelongtimelurker at 10:29 PM on December 23, 2011