Japan’s Most Alarming Warning Label

The Japanese adult toy industry operates under its own logic, one I’ve largely made peace with, but Toy’s Heart tested that peace with a masturbator called Warning Against the Narrow Hole—a product name that functions simultaneously as product description, liability disclaimer, and potential evidence exhibit. It listed on Amazon Japan for the equivalent of about eight euros. Somehow the price point makes it worse.

There’s a particular kind of horror in a product that is exactly what it says it is. Most novelties from that corner of the market rely on abstraction and euphemism. This one just told you, plainly, in the name, on the box. And then sold it to you for less than a movie ticket. I don’t have a tidy verdict on what that says about the industry or about anything else. I just know I’d read the warning label more carefully than most.