Few words are as evocative and provoking as “porn”. Just saying it seems dirty somehow, and yet there aren’t many people who could truthfully say that they didn’t enjoy it at least a little. Especially when it comes to the gentlemen, for whom being a porn star seems like one of the most coveted occupations ever.

But is it really that great? A book released in Japan this year explores the Japanese AV (adult video) industry from the male perspective and reveals some surprising information.

Titled The “Male AV Actor” Occupation: the Reality of the Sex Cyborgs, the book puts forward some some shocking truths about professional male AV actors in Japan.

Perhaps the most surprising things is their numbers.

There are about 10,000 women acting in the Japanese AV industry now, putting out around 4,500 titles a month. And how many men do you think there are? You’d probably expect quite a few. After all, sex is all men think about, right? Getting paid big bucks to sleep with countless women? The directors must be beating off potential applicants with a stick!

Well, not quite. For all the daydreams and endless fantasies, most men simply can’t hack it in the Japanese AV world. For the majority, it’s simply a lack the necessary, ahem, “skills.” After all, can you perform multiple times a day? (Remember, those 4,500 titles a month!) Can you follow directions and assume the positions? Can you “work” in front of a group? Even if they’re taking photos, adjusting lights, making calls to impatient distributors, and criticizing your technique? And, perhaps most importantly, can you get in the mood regardless of who your partner or partners may be? We mean, it’s not always Tsubomi…

Even if you say yes, there’s another issue: are you willing to be a social pariah? Have your “oh!” face seen by millions of fapping men? Once you’ve made a film, it’s a permanent part of your record—even if you don’t put it on a resume, it won’t be hard for someone armed with a picture of your face and Google Image Search to uncover your dirty deeds.

Despite all that, there still has to be a few hundred professional male Japanese AV actors, right? Try 70.

Bear in mind, of course, that this does not count “amateur” actors, so it’s likely that the exact number of men who have acted in a pornographic film in any given month is much more than 70. However, that doesn’t change the fact that there are only around 70 professional male AV actors.
As unbelievable as it may be, those 70 actors “take care” of the 10,000 women in the Japanese AV industry. Or, to put it another way, if there are 4,500 films produced a month, that means that about 150 are made a day—so one actor is making around two pornographic films a day, at least according to The “Male AV Actor” Occupation.

That’s got to be exhausting! But on the other hand, if you assume a pay out of about 50,000 yen (US$506) per film, these studs, in every sense of the word, are making 100,000 yen ($1,012) a day. They’re at the same level, physically and financially, as some professional athletes!

But our AV stars face an altogether different predicament: the emotional impact of performing so many insanely intimate acts with veritable strangers.

When asked if they felt like they understood women, the 19 men interviewed for the book all expressed a similar sentiment of either not trusting or not understanding women in the slightest. One actor even said, “It’s because I don’t understand women that I can do this job. I think the more I do it, the less I understand them.”

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