Historical and Modern Japanese Incest Acceptance

See Also: "Incest Throughout History: Motivations, Popularity, and Acceptance From Ancient Times to Modern Society" and Incest Behavior in Primates and Primitive Societies

Historical and modern Japanese incestuous acceptance has been widely studied and reported. However, the extent and commonplace of incest in modern Japanese society is debated.

A 1959 study conducted by Shunichi Kubo concluded that incest was considered “praiseworthy conduct” in rural areas where fathers commonly married their daughters when the mother had died or became incapacitated, and when fathers were incapable of being the head of the family their sons often took over the role and had incestuous sex with their mothers and sisters to “end confusion in the order of the home” and other members of the family deemed the practice normal.

In urban areas as well, Kudo found after studying 36 incest cases in Hiroshima that incest was sometimes accepted as normal even though it was denounced by general society.

The modern tradition that Japanese mothers and sons practice incest as a bonding mechanism, to reduce stress, to provide sexual education, and to avert sexual distraction is widely reputed. It’s depicted as an extension of maternal care and responsibility. However, the legitimacy of these claims is uncertain with some sources refuting this practice as common tradition.

What we do know is that communal bathing at sento public bathhouses and onsen hot springs is very traditional in Japan, including with family members. That tradition extends to familial co-bathing at home as well. This co-bathing ritual is more about bonding and stress relief than cleanliness because family members often cleanse before co-bathing together. Co-sleeping, including a practice known as “dakine” where families sleep in embrace, is also common even if there is available space to sleep apart between parents and offspring until adolescence or later.

Both practices are innately intimate, even if not sexual, and contrast most western societies especially between parents and offspring of a certain age.

The Journal of Psychohistory (Fall 1991) article previously cited stated that Japanese mothers sometimes educate their sons in sex “in much the same manner as they earlier helped them with toilet training” as if it’s an expected duty, including stimulating their sons to achieve their first ejaculation. It further correlates the high incidence of co-sleeping and limited contact with fathers as factors for mother-son incest. Although it notes that there is no evidence as to the true incidence rates of such practice.

Co-sleeping and physical intimacy as forms of nurturing and bonding are explicitly referenced by William Caudill and David W. Plath in their 1966 paper “Who Sleeps by Whom? Parent-Child Involvement in Urban Japanese Families,” although there is no direct inference of sex.

In 1989, Michio Kitahara published two research articles in The Journal of Psychohistory relating to the prevalence of incest in Japanese culture that are heavily sourced. Kitahara specifically references the practice of mothers indoctrinating their sons’ sexuality, commonly in the bathroom: “In Japan, the mother appears to look at the sexual aspect of her son as another biological phenomenon, just like eating, sleeping, or elimination. As a result, she deals with it as if she were letting a three-year-old son urinate.”

Kitahara cites the case of a 20-year-old male who stated, when getting an erection while co-bathing with his mother, she insisted it was “better to discharge it” and stroked him to ejaculate for the first time. This led to eventual coitus with his mother.

Francis Pike confirmed this tradition in a 1997 The Spectator article.

In a 1993 publication, Dr. Satoru Saito called out a “mother complex” as common by Japanese sons, further stating Japanese sons mix traditional male-female relationships with mother-sons relations and “want to assert their sexuality, but at the same time they want to be held by their mothers – warm, safe, secure.”

On the other hand, the Japanese tradition of mother-son incest is doubted by some who assert it’s an urban legend that arose from the popularity of mother-son incest stories in the 1970s and 1980s. A common theme in those stories involved mothers assisting sons with sex to avert distraction when studying for university entrance exams. One such opposing source is Transgressions of the Everyday: Stories of Mother-Son Incest in Japanese Popular Culture by Anne Allison. Allison argues that married women who are sexually frustrated in marriage are more likely to pursue an extramarital affair than incest with their sons.

It should be noted that Kitahara’s commonly cited research included analysis of these stories, among other sources including a reputed telephone hotline which some sources assert, without evidence, may have been prank calls.  

Still, it’s hard to believe some of the previously stated accounts never occur, in Japan and elsewhere even if not common. Legends often have a basis in reality so one should not completely discount them.