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Paper short abstract

An investigation in the under-researched area of Japanese erotic audio use, specifically the ways in which different genres of erotic voice media have been used since the twentieth century for non-sexual functions such as entertainment, parasocial connection, and wellness or self-care.

Paper long abstract

Scholarly work on erotic audio in both sex work and popular culture has formed a small but diverse international field in sexuality and sound studies since the 1990s, with research on phone sex lines (Hall, 1995) and Japanese adult messaging services (Kashimura, 1989), boys love cassettes and CDs (Ishida, 2019), pornographic “ero-games” (Kikawada, 2020), and narrated erotic fantasies streamed online (Cheng, 2025). Since the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars of "sexy" voice media aimed at women outside Japan have begun to examine the non-sexual functions of such texts, particularly with regard to wellness and self-care (Lee, 2022; Bellas & McAlister, 2023). Japan has a long history of erotic audio, but explorations of its purposes and pleasures outside the realm of sexuality are lacking. This presentation will therefore consider the ways in which various types of Japanese erotic voice media have been co-opted for non-erotic purposes.

I will begin with a brief discussion of an early form of mediated erotic voice, a subgenre of rakugo with roots in the late Edo period known as enshō. In a somewhat similar way to racy American “blue discs” of the same period, its purpose was to simultaneously titillate the audience and make them laugh (Smith, 2004). Released (and frequently banned) since the 1930s on short-playing records, this type of erotic-comic tale could be considered a foundation for subsequent voice media that comprise multiple functions, including arousal, parasocial connection, entertainment, and wellbeing. From ero-cassette tapes of the 1980s featuring the voices of gravure idols, whose often unprofessional performance has been seen as a way of prompting feelings of affection from fans (Yasuda, 2024), to anonymous online amateur recordings that fail to arouse commenters but make them laugh, and more recently commercialised audio streams that act as relaxation aids – engaging the listener as an imagined partner as the performer “makes love” to them and then helps them fall asleep – this presentation traces erotic voice media and its non-sexual functions through the twentieth century to the present. It will conclude with a short consideration of the potential uses of emerging interactive AI voices.