Online porn trends reveal worldwide taste for Japanese hentai

We consider it our mission on this blog to tell the world how amazing Japanese sexuality and sexual subcultures are, but it seems that our work is already done without us realizing it.

The entire planet is apparently obsessed with Japanese porn — at least, if we judge things purely by search results (which is perhaps not the most accurate barometer).

Pornhub has announced its biggest search terms of 2022 and we are delighted and intrigued by the results.

The main trend worldwide it noted was the rise in porn tagged “reality,” perhaps to offset the growing professionalism of “amateur” category porn. People still really want that homemade look.

But the top search term worldwide in 2022 remained “hentai,” with “Japanese” just behind. The numbers are probably boosted by searches for this content across Asia (content in the “Japanese” category is the most popular across East and Southeast Asian countries, though Japan and the Philippines are the only nations in the region to rank among the top 20 in terms of traffic).

In Japan, “Japanese” unsurprisingly remained the top search term for uses, and “uncensored” moved up four ranks to become the second most popular, though lagging behind “Japanese” by a long, long margin. Certain search terms (in Japanese) saw big jumps, especially “car sex” (up 754%) and “face riding” (up 612%).

Searches in Japan for “Korean” grew by 144% more than the rest of the world, and “uncensored hentai” by 416% more and “cosplay” by 117% more.

In terms of categories, “Japanese” again came out top among Japan-based users, followed by “creampie,” “outdoor,” “amateur,” and “Asian.”

In the United States, “lesbian” jumped to the top as the favorite search term, replacing “hentai,” while “Ebony” and “Latina” (sadly for us) shifted ahead of “Asian.”

A map of the States related to search terms throws up some intriguing insights. We can now see where hentai and anime fans most live!

When organized by gender, “Japanese” remained the top category for male users worldwide (as it did in 2021), though also came an intriguing second place for female viewers.

However, the proportion of female users in Japan grew only 2% to 31% (whereas other countries saw slightly higher rises).

On the other hand, no Japanese performers ranked in the most popular performers or amateur models list worldwide. Not as many users are searching for specific JAV porn stars, it seems, though this only covers non-Japanese searches and we imagine that Japanese users — who account for the fourth-most numerous on Pornhub — are searching names in Japanese. On the other hand, the lack of non-Japanese searches might also relate to strict control of copyrighted content by Japanese production companies and distributors making efforts to get videos taken down before they have had a chance to build up views and searches.

Pornhub doesn’t provide data on Japanese name searches in Japanese, though Yua Mikami and Melody Marks (both performers in Japan with international appeal) appeared in the top five most-searched (in English) performers in Japan.

Japanese characters also don’t tend to feature among the most-searched movies and characters worldwide, though they do for video games (even if these are games with a global reach). In Japan, “One Piece” searches grew by 542%.

Japan is bucking the trend for decreased average visit time that affected Pornhub in 2022: Japan-based users spent nearly half a minute longer on the site.