"next target...Entropy": Shiofuki and the art of female ejaculation

22/9/06

Shiofuki and the art of female ejaculation

"Doctor, is it true that any woman can ejaculate?"

Kyoko, a 21-year-old Tokyo University student, asked me this as she shut the door and entered the consultation room at my clinic. Both myself and the clinic's gynecologist rolled our eyes."But my boyfriend tells me everyone can do it."So, on to our theme this week of female ejaculation, or shiofuki, as it's called in Japanese, taking the term also used to describe a whale spouting water.

Shiofuki has become a household word in Japan largely through the efforts of one man -- Taka Kato, the 44-year-old adult movie actor who has made a name for himself by making so many of his on-screen female companions ejaculate. Female ejaculation became a common theme when Kato, variety performer Kuniko Yamada and I appeared together as co-hosts of LaLa TV's "Perfect H."Kyoko, the young woman worried about female ejaculation, had left her boyfriend sitting in the clinic waiting room with the other mostly female patients waiting to see me. We called him into the consultation room to talk about shiofuki. Among the first words he uttered were "Taka Kato."

"Taka-san says he can make any woman he performs with ejaculate," the boyfriend said.Bearing in mind that adult movies are supposed to be a form of entertainment and thus a performance, I asked the young lad to show me his fingernails. He thrust his hand out at me and I took a look."With these fingernails, working on the G-spot would probably end up rupturing the vaginal walls. Before you try to copy Taka with anything else, first copy the way Taka keeps his fingernails cut short."I spoke about the G-spot. Well, this is the organ where shiofuki occurs. Strictly speaking, the G-spot is actually the Grafenberg Spot, named after Berlin gynecologist Ernst Grafenberg who discovered that stimulating the inside front wall of the vagina could spark sexual arousal.

China and India with their rich sexual histories have known about the organ for centuries, but the G-spot was only given its name in Western medicine in the 20th century -- a path often followed in the medical world.Lying on your back, it's close on impossible to find the G-spot. Gravity forces the body's organs downward and it becomes inaccessible from the opening of the vagina. It's best for a woman to try finding it while sitting on the toilet. She should raise the front part of her vaginal wall with some force using one hand and use the other hand to push down on her pubic bone just above the groin. The quarter-sized organ that feels incredibly good when you touch it is the G-spot.

If the woman has a partner, it's easy to find if she lies down on her belly, spreads her legs and raises her hips a little so they can be rotated. Her partner should move their flattened hand underneath her, then insert the middle two fingers and push firmly into the front of the vaginal wall. By moving the pelvic area and touching around, the partner can find the G-spot when the woman feels good.While working on "Perfect H," Taka Kato and I once had a torrid exchange about shiofuki, or female ejaculation. The self-professed shiofuki expert said that the female ejaculate was urine. But, we had a discussion about the ejaculate, with Kato saying that because it didn't have the ammonia smell that builds up after a long time spent in the bladder it could only possibly be fresh urine. What weakened Kato's argument, however, was that the vast majority of actresses upon whom he had performed shiofuki had been to the toilet shortly beforehand.Having heard Kato's arguments, I took it as my responsibility as a doctor to look into the mechanism.

I picked up a medical terminology book and found there was no entry for the G-spot, but instead it was referred to as Skene's glands and that female ejaculate contains acid phosphatase, a liquid also found in the prostate. Put simply, the G-spot performs some similar roles in women as the prostate does in men and that's why shiofuki is also called female ejaculation.

Why did this quarter-sized organ gain the capability to ejaculate? The answer to that question lies in the breasts, or the mammary glands, to be more precise. Mammary glands are not like a milk tank that can disperse breast milk simply by twisting or turning some trigger. Breast milk comes out when the breasts are sucked. Glands need to be set off to work. The G-spot (Skene's glands) is the same, emitting more liquid the more it is stimulated. Female ejaculation is kind of like blocking a running hose and then relieving the pressure and watching the water spurt forth.

Nonetheless, the probability of finding the G-spot is very limited, at about 60 percent. And long fingernails can be dangerous, causing blood to spurt forth from ruptures rather than any shiofuki. And people should also remember that female ejaculation doesn't necessarily come simultaneously with an orgasm.