Japan has begun a trial roll-out of the morning-after pill, finally bringing availability of emergency contraception in line with most other industrialized nations. To the chagrin of condom manufacturers (of whom Japan has some of the best in the world), a lot -- if not most -- sex in Japan is unprotected, resulting in a lot of unwanted pregnancies or fears of conception (not to mention, an explosion of syphilis cases). Sometimes it seems that every celebrity marriage is the result of the woman in the partnership getting pregnant, which is hardly the best example to set (and, let's be ...

After much legal wrangling and media speculation, Japan is apparently set to approve the abortion pill, but it would still require women to seek their partner's consent beforehand. We have to be careful here to draw a distinction between the morning-after pill (which is already available in Japan, but a prescription from a doctor is needed and it's expensive) and the abortion pill. The latter is reportedly to become available in Japan (as a two-drug combo, Mifepristone and Misoprostol, made by British pharmaceutical firm Linepharma International), though decades after women have had access ...

For years it has been notoriously difficult to get hold of: the morning-after pill. In Japan, for a woman to receive emergency contraception, she has to go to a doctor and get a prescription. And it's expensive, too. But women have been campaigning for years to remove the barriers blocking easy access to the morning-after pill, which is surely one of the reasons for so many shotgun weddings in Japan (including among many prominent celebrities). The current system is condemned as shaming and discriminatory, and is particularly a problem for victims of sexual assault, whose treatment by ...

The Japan Times has published an interesting article about Pilcon, a safe sex organization started by a young Japanese woman. "Asuka Someya discovered she was pregnant at the age of 20 when she was a university student." This proved the fuel for her later founding of Pilcon in 2013. Now every two months it holds workshops and talks to make up for the shortcomings of sex education (or lack there of) in Japanese schools and families. It has also produced YouTube videos about safe sex, such as this one which has been viewed 1.5 million times since late 2012. It contains the quite awesome ...