Long-time foreign residents know from experience that just when they think they’ve finally gotten used to life in Japan, they run across something new and realize they ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

A case in point is the Dekoboko Shindo. This facility is located next door to the Taga Shinto shrine in Uwajima, Ehime Prefecture, and is operated and maintained by the shrine’s priest. It is commonly known as the Dekoboko Tera, however. (A tera is a Buddhist temple.) As confusing as that may be, it doesn’t give you any idea what you’ll find inside. That’s because it’s a three-story sex museum crammed with “tens of thousands of items”. A museum official says they have to rotate the items on display and claims it would take about 10 years for a visitor to see everything.

The museum was built to house the collection of Morimaru Kubo, the former priest at the Taga Shrine. His son now follows in his father’s footsteps, both at the shrine and the museum. While the shrine is the oldest in the area, Kubo realized (or became enlightened, in the original Japanese) that “Sex is religion, sex is philosophy, sex is morality, sex is science, sex is both life itself and human life”, and founded the Great Procreation sect. His maxim is printed on the back of the museum’s entry tickets, which cost 800 yen (US$7.30), but group discounts are available. It’s open every day of the year.

Museum visitors are unanimous in their amazement at the sheer number of items on display, both inside and outside. They also agree it would be difficult to decide where to begin to describe the exhibits, as they come from all over the world and range from the old to the new and the valuable to the trivial. These include several thousand samples of pubic hair preserved and displayed as if they were part of a butterfly collection. Every available inch of one wall is covered with photographs and illustrations of Japanese Shinto festivals with a sexual theme. The first floor is devoted to Japanese exhibits, the second floor to overseas items, and the third floor to ukiyo-e illustrations.

It’s a shame the church I attended in my childhood didn’t have an annex like this. I never would have missed Sunday school!

The photographs available on the web are either from the museum website or from blogs, so apart from the shot of the building’s exterior, I won’t show any here. But yes, I will provide links. Remember, they’re all in Japanese.

Here is the link for the shrine and the museum.

This page from the museum’s site shows examples of their exhibits. Those in the first row are Japanese ukiyo-e. Those on the second row, left to right, are from Nepal, a temple not in Japan, and Pompeii. The third row shows exhibits from Japan, Palau, and Europe. (In his autobiography, Casanova refers to the “standing tree” position, and scholars still can’t figure out what he meant. I wonder if the couple in the European illustration is performing the standing tree. Apart from the musical instrument, of course.) The exhibits from left to right on the fourth row are from Peru, Portugal, an unidentified location, and Bali.

The Japanese explanation at the bottom of this page says that sex is the only thing that the divinity has given to every member of humankind, and that the museum hopes we come to the realization that this is a philosophy of life for people. They say it will take a whole day to see all the exhibits, but an entire lifetime to achieve the supreme realization of this principle. The term “supreme realization” is a religious expression in Japanese. After all, this museum was built by a Shinto priest.

Of course they sell trinkets for souvenirs. Here are some samples on this page.

Other sites with photos include this one here, and this one (last two photos at the bottom). This site also has two photos of the facility at the bottom. The other photos on the page show various scenes in the Uwajima area. The picture directly above the Dekoboko temple is of some Korean statuary on the grounds of the Taga Shrine next door.

Here’s a final note for non-Japanese speakers on the name of the facility. Dekoboko means uneven, irregular, or bumpy (as in a bumpy road). The word is written with two kanji—deko, which means convex or protruding, and boko, which means indented.

Japanese can understand the meaning of these two kanji–and the reason for selecting them as the facility’s name–just by looking at the characters themselves. Here’s an idea of what they look like, starting with deko. Make a fist and look at the back of your hand. Then, raise your middle and ring fingers and curl them at the big joint so that the finger pads touch the inside of the knucles. The outline of the back of your hand and the partially raised fingers is identical to the outline of the character.

To visualize boko, start with a fist and look at the back of your hand again. This time, raise your index and little fingers and curl them at the knuckle into the fist. Once again, the outline is the same as the outline of the character.

That should be enough information to figure out the rest for yourselves!