pullling back in japan

[pelagian]

An interesting thread on the LPSG site here: https://www.lpsg.com/threads/foreskin-in-japan.5424271/#post-72949691

The OP is Japanese, and he says (and he has several other posts in the thread):
Today I've decided to share with you an interesting fact that might sound totally new and incredible to many of you, but is absolutely true and natural to us Japanese guys.

Browsing through the Internet, including this website, I always get surprised and amused by how differently we in Japan see foreskin from the rest of the world.

Actually, the majority of Japanese guys are desperate to have a foreskin-free penis. But this is not about circumcision. Our ideal is for our dick head to come out in the process of our growing up.
As we don't usually get circumcised at birth, our dicks are all covered when we are children. Therefore, for us, a "covered" dick means a child/immature dick. And not only that. An "uncovered" dick or an exposed glans is a symbol of adulthood. Many Japanese believe the "normal" adult penis is the one with the glans completely out of the foreskin! Thus, many guys after puberty make a lot of effort not to have their covered dick seen by others if they have one.

As I wrote above, most of us are unfamiliar to the tradition of circumcision, so whether you are cut or uncut is rarely talked about here. Instead, we care about whether our glans have "grown out of" the foreskin or not (which might be a metaphor worth studying ethnologically).

Because of this, we have very unique phenomena in Japan (at least until a little while ago):
- around the time they enter puberty, many guys are taught (by elder guys or books or whatever) to always retract their foreskin, so that it gets fixed that way
- in public baths, guys whose glans are usually covered retract their foreskin before getting naked (this is sometimes called "miemuki" ("retracting for vanity"))
- the word "hokei" (covered dick) is often used as an insult to a guy

[BenTwilley]

Agree, one of my sons lives in Japan, and we go to the Onsen often. All the local guys are 'pulled back', only the occasional English, Aussie etc has their foreskin over the glans. As I've said elsewhere, both my sons and I are retracted all the time.

[Kylar]

I have a small sample, but my young(ish, we're talking about people in 20s and 30s) Japanese friends are mostly covered and not even interested in uncovered state.  I feel like this might be generational and the younger people aren't that much into it all.

[thesevenpointfive]

Yes its a very interesting thread, sounds like some other groups that treat man hood when the head shows

[BenTwilley]

I would add that most of them need a trim!