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Japan has a problem with “masturbation.” Not the act itself, but rather the word. Masutābēshon, rendered this way because of the syllabic structure of the language, feels a little awkward and too foreign. There is the native ji’i (literally “self-comfort”) but that sounds coldly clinical. Shikoru, conversely, is too informal, bordering on vulgar. The safest choice has long been onanī, but even that term has limitations in everyday speech.
“At first, I often used the word ‘onanī’ in our copy because I wanted to normalize it,” says Koichi Matsumoto, founder and president of TENGA, a Japanese sexual aid company (the term “sex toy” doesn’t align with their philosophy). “But no matter how much we bring it to the surface, some words are too embarrassing to use in public. After the company took off, many people found it easier to say ‘TENGA’ instead.”
TENGA launched in 2005 as a male masturbatory aid manufacturer and is now the largest company of its kind in Japan, with consolidated sales revenue of about12.5 billion yen (over $77 million) in 2025. Accessibility has been an undeniable cornerstone of their success that has made the company name a euphemistic alternative for discussing self-pleasure. TENGA products are today available everywhere, from Japanese convenience stores to health and beauty retailers, often with people unfamiliar with the company never realizing they’re looking at sex toys.
Starting with their original red-with-silvery-white-stripes CUP series, TENGA products have always more resembled consumer electronics and the like, marketing themselves accordingly as non-pornographic, sexual wellness items. You won’t find any nudes or anything remotely sexual on their packaging or in their look. However, according to Matsumoto, the lack of an anatomical design in TENGA’s lineup goes beyond creating mass-market appeal.
“When I was first doing my research on adult goods, I felt that the onahoru [artificial vaginas] were substitutes for women. Like they were meant to replace women,” he explains. “It was as if they compacted real people to one part of their body and said ‘This is all that women are worth.’ I absolutely hate that. I hate the feeling of male power and conquest at the heart of that design.”
With a presence in 67 countries and still growing, TENGA is well set to reframe the global conversation around masturbation. Moving away from anatomically correct models in order to decouple masturbation from sex is just part of it. The larger goal seems to be to bring the adult goods business out of the shadows.
“The entire industry used to be underground,” Matsumoto recalls. “The products had no brand, no manufacturer listed, no copy, in an era when everyone was using computers, carrying cellphones, and watching LCD TVs.” Matsumoto adds that this is why one of the first things he included in his products was a customer service number. To the president of TENGA, it’s all part of a product’s “branding,” which works similarly to signing your name on a product to signal that you plan to take responsibility for it. As he put it: “What is a brand? It’s a promise to society.” For Matsumoto, it’s specifically a promise to keep tinkering with and improving on his products, following the example of an unexpected corporate idol.
“What I aimed for from the start was to become like Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is delicious and cool. Everyone around the world knows the logo. It’s loved by so many people. And even with that one product, they keep improving it.” TENGA’s president says that’s one of his driving philosophies.
But in order to “to create something that enriches human sexuality,” as Matsumoto put it, you have to include women in the conversation. Today, TENGA also has a line of female-oriented iroha vibrators that address another problem that Matsumoto identified within Japan’s once-broken adult goods industry: men making and designing “pleasure items” for women. The results, as he says, are products “filled with male ego” and “big, bulky, and grotesque” objects that, according to him, most women don’t want to use.
His solution was to leave the design of the iroha to his female employees, who make up 45.5% of the company. For iroha, TENGA formed a dedicated development group that obsessed over details men had overlooked in women-oriented adult goods like “whether the switch is easy to press with long nails.” The overall verdict was that women preferred something that gave them control instead of a feeling of being controlled by a machine. That’s why vibrators like TENGA’s iroha mai or iroha TSUKI feature much narrower and flexible tips that make them “easier to insert,” Matsumoto says, concluding that “I would never have thought of this.”
TENGA’s current focus is on couples that goes far beyond couple pleasure items. While Matsumoto maintains that masturbation and sex are two different things, one can and often does lead to the other, and that’s where he wants the company to be: at the forefront of sex, in an educational capacity.
Their Seicil website is a partnership with medical professionals who answer anonymous questions from young people on any topic, from masturbation to protection, LGBTQ+ issues, or even whether high-schoolers can rent rooms at love hotels. TENGA also operates a Seicil website specifically for adults because the lack of proper sexual education is sadly not a new problem.
However, perhaps somewhat ironically for the founder of a masturbatory aid company, one of Matsumoto’s biggest success stories is helping bring life to the world. The TENGA MEN’S LOUPE is a smartphone magnifying glass and app that let users check their sperm count at home and get men engaged with their own reproductive health. A few years back, Matsumoto was apparently approached by a couple with a child that was born because his product alerted them to their fertility issues. They told him, “Thanks to you, we had this child.” A success indeed.