What is JAV? FAQ

JAV stands for Japanese Adult videos. Or in other words Japanese porn. Another common acronym is AV.

Why is JAV censored in 2022?

In short, Japan has anti-obscenity laws that do get enforced. Namely article 175 of Japanese law which takes care of obscenity. The law and interpretation has changed over the years but nowadays is still in full-force and studios pay attention to it.

This might sound as a contradiction for Japan, which has some of the most pretty liberal laws regarding porn in all of Asia. Compared to many other countries in Asia and around the world in which porn is outright banned.

But, let this serve as an example:

  • 2004, Yuji Suwa, a Hentai manga artist was brought to trial for violation of Article 175. (And convicted guilty.)
  • 2013, several people were brought to court for distributing obscene materials without insufficient censoring.
  • 2014 onwards: JAV studios panicked and increased the digital censorship (Also referred to as the mosaic), considerably.

And so the situation in 2022 is that we have a considerable thick censorship, much thick than pre-2014.

Is uncensored Japanese porn JAV?

In short, yeah. But if you are nitpicky like me you could say no and be right about it.

Because if the studio is not Japanese and the movies are not distributed in Japan is not JAV. Regardless of the main actress or the staff were Japanese nationals.

What is the appeal of JAV?

The way I see it:

  1. Entertainment value. While American/European porn just produces films for a quick fap. JAV also aims for the entertainment part of it and touches a more wide variety of human feelings, such as comedy, drama, anger, infidelity, horror and a wide range of fetishes.
  2. Quality. The quality of JAV the movies is very high and most productions have a clear and elaborated script. Usually, they focus on single fetish for the whole movie and the productions have higher budgets than the American counterparts.
  3. Quantity. There are several dozen new JAV movies released every single day.
  4. Creativity. A unique creative approach. Very few fetishes are left untouched.
  5. Japanese girls. If you like Japanese or Asian girls in general, you are in the right place. Also the cult to particular actresses is much more strong in Japanese porn.

How to obtain and purchase JAV movies legally:

  • R18.com (English version of adult DMM website).
  • Dmm.co.jp ( Japanese version. They are called Fanza nowadays).

Physical copies can be purchased at Amazon.co.jp. (However, Amazon Japan don’t ship adult goods outside Japan).

And other websites such as Square plus or cdjapan.

I successfully purchased in all these websites listed above in the past. So yes, they are legit and reliable.

Sources of JAV actress information:

  1. minnano-av.com. Profiles. (Japanese language)
  2. actress.dmm.co.jp. Profiles, etc. (Japanese language)
  3. http://jkavj.blog.fc2.com/ A twitter ranking list for the most followed AV actresses. (Japanese language). JAV girls use twitter constantly for making announcements and to self-promote their lives and work, etc. Another good place is Instagram if they have it.
  4. Japanese Wikipedia.

What are the codes all about?

Information in 4 letters and 3 numbers.

JAV films get assigned a code by the studio to uniquely identify it. It’s very rare (although it happened) that 2 movies will share the same code. Hence we could say that every JAV movie has its unique code.

JAV codes consist of a few letters and help to identify the maker and the fetish if such maker focuses in a fetish. The product code gets to be printed on the side of a DVD cover and in the back of the box. Mathematics leave no room for mistake, so it’s a brilliant system and the fastest and accurate way of telling other what movie you talking about.

Where to search codes?:

  1. R18.com. English.
  2. Dmm.co.jp. Japanese.
  3. javlibrary.com. A scrapped and google auto-translated version of Dmm.co.jp website, but still popular and useful.