Like every hobby or “fandom”, the doll world is filled with it’s fair share of socially awkward geeks with way too much free time on their hands. They turn chat boards into drama & insult filled battlefields and obsess over the latest doll releases to the point of absurdity while whining about the quality of one companies products over another’s, but in recent years within the “doller” (yes folks, the Japanese have a term for everything and the extremely doll obsessed in Japan are now referred to as “dollers”) world there has manifested what could be some of the most bizarre fetish filled sub-communities in the history of all Japanese fandoms.

In the mid 1990s the US based company Real Doll started producing more realistic life-size sex dolls for adults. These unusual creations have even generated fan sites where buyers enjoy sharing photos of their Real Dolls such as Charlie Joanne and photographers like Elena Dorfmann have even published books like Still Lovers showcasing Real Dolls. Even with this kind of exposure, most Real Doll owners in the US seem to be pretty low-key about their “hobby,” but in Japan sex doll owners and the companies that produce them are becoming much more common place among the doll hobby world.

Loose parts of a “Candy Doll”

There are a few companies in Japan producing different kinds of life size sex dolls and it’s not uncommon now to see them advertised and sold at some doll and toy conventions and shops in Japan alongside robot toys and regular dolls. One of the most popular companies producing these realistic sex dolls in Japan is Orient Doll. Orient Doll makes Candy Dolls which are customizable and have a starting price of about $6300.00 a piece. Many Candy Doll owners in Japan have turned their purchases into family members who they dress every day and celebrate holidays with. If they can’t afford a doll of their very own or don’t want to have to explain owning a life size atomically correct doll to their wife, they can also visit one of the sex dollhouses Like Pure Doll in Japan where for $1000 you can spend 90min. with any doll of your choice. Yes Virginia, doll whorehouses exist.

I came across this fascinating video of a sex doll owner in Japan on youtube who seems to live alone and obsesses over his collection of life size silicon dolls daily.

As someone who enjoys collecting dolls, dressing them up and photographing them, I’d be a liar of I said I found the man’s obsession totally alien, but in many ways I do because I don’t have any desire to have sex with my dolls and unlike a lot of doll obsessed people, I don’t really see my dolls as much more than great artist models, nice pieces of art and really fun toys.

I don’t like to pass judgment on any sexual fetish. We all have our various kinks and get our kicks in all sorts of unusual ways, but there’s something especially fascinating and just a little unnerving to me about these extreme “dollers” who obsess over these lifelike dolls, which they not only dress up and customize, but also have sex with. Is it much different than a woman buying a dildo and giving the piece of rubber a nickname for kicks & giggles? Not much really, but these same women who find that “cute & funny” would probably say “Eww! Gross!” when confronted with a male “doller” and his Candy Doll.

A Candy Doll

Speaking of the female vs. male equation, it seems that most of the extreme “dollers” in Japan are men, but not exclusively. I know that Real Doll in America now makes male dolls for men and women, but so far I’ve only heard rumors about male versions of sex dolls like the Candy Doll being made in Japan. I’m sure they probably exist since Japanese women and many men would probably buy them if they did, but I just haven’t come across any yet.

I don’t personally care for the way that the doll fetishists and doll hobbyists are now starting to blur into one in Japan, but it doesn’t really bother me that much either. You won’t find Candy Dolls selling at the Tokyo Toys-R-Us store, but as I mentioned above, you also shouldn’t be surprised when you come across an ad for Candy Dolls at the counter of a doll shop selling Azone items normally bought for Dollfies. It’s a bit surreal and I can definitely see that like all large fan based hobbies in Japan (anime, manga, etc.) there is probably going to be a healthy (or unhealthy?) dose of sex tossed into Japanese doll hobby fandom more and more as time goes by. I think that the Gentaro Araki designed dolls with optional orgasm face plates and erect penises are probably a good example of this slowly growing trend. No bad pun was intended, but there it is.

Unlike the western world, sex is not some kind of awful taboo topic in Japan, it’s just kept a bit private because Japanese people are very private people, but I’ve seen porn shops selling their hardcore goods right next to toy shops being visited by moms and their babies. Of course in Japan mom is buying porn right along with dad, but in the western world dolls will probably always be considered “kid’s stuff” so I’m curious to see how the growing interest in Japanese doll hobby will effect westerners in the future, especially since a lot of American doll hobbyists seem to be god fearing Christians who’ve probably never had an orgasm.

Last year all hell broke loose on doll hobby chat boards when some Americans finally figured out that the swastika was still used in Japan and that Asian companies had no problem with selling items and clothing - including dolls & doll clothing - with swastikas. If Asian doll shops started selling versions of Candy Dolls would it cause a huge stir? I wonder… It seems that Americans and their buying power are obviously having an effect on various Japanese hobby & toy companies, so there’s a good chance that America’s puritan values as well as powerfull dollars will effect Japanese culture much more than Japanese culture will ever effect America’s puritan roots.

Besides buying, customizing and playing with sex dolls, the Japanese are now taking their doll fetish to a whole other level and deciding to become dolls themselves. These kinds of extreme “doller cosplayers”” or “Animegao” (aka Anime Face) take cosplaying every seriously and are involved in a new kind of cosplay/performance art called Kigurumi or “living doll”. Many make their own masks and costumes, but you can also buy expensive and extremely detailed “doller” costumes as well. When these people are in costume they do not speak and stick to a strict code of what they consider to be doll-like behavior.

Cosplaying Dollers

Most of these people who dress up as dolls seem to get some kind of deep personal satisfaction from it and sometimes sexual satisfaction as well, which I really can’t understand myself, but I still find it fascinating. Like sex doll enthusiasts, a lot of these doll cosplayers are men who dress up as female “dolls”, but I’ve come across a few women who seemed involved in doller cosplay as well. To learn more about doller cosplay I suggest visiting some of the web sites I’ve come across such as Doll House which belongs to the guy who started the whole “living doll” craze and Kuniko’s Room. Kuniko is an unusual Japanese guy who has lots of pictures on his site as well as a diary/blog where he chats openly in Japanese as well as English about his obsession with being a “living doll.”

Dollers or “living dolls” wearing homemade costumes

So why do these extreme “dollers” unnerve me so much? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself lately and I think it’s because it taps into some things that I feel are really wrong with the modern world and that is the way that I see human beings communicating or not communicating with one another now. We’re becoming a society that’s much more concerned with casual relations than deep relationships. In other words, it’s important that your cellphone’s ringing all the time even though the conversations are utterly pointless because hey, if your phones ringing that means you have “friends.”

Communication most often takes place online, in chat rooms, on cellphones, etc. and real human contact is much more rare. When there is contact at a party or some kind of social gathering it is often so vapid and unthreatening that a mere drop of substance into its shallow water threatens to drown everyone in the room.

People now seem to want acquaintances who offer them some kind of false security and don’t challenge them in any way. Friendships and relationships are often based on “what have you done for me lately?” and “what will you do for me in the future?” In casual conversation real opinions are being replaced with “maybe” and “could be” because it’s just much easier to agree with everyone in the room then to be labeled “different,” “troublesome,” “annoying,” “crazy,” “arrogant,” or just a “pain in the ass.”

I firmly believe that there is a real lack of depth in our modern world and in many ways it has to do with the way we don’t communicate anymore so replacing a human being with a silent silicon doll for contact as well as conversation and worst of all, sex, doesn’t surprise me or disgust me as much as it just saddens me.

Even worse than that, are people who feel more comfortable becoming dolls and would rather live in a world where masks are worn 24/7 and silence is truly golden.

Of course most people have a few masks that they wear on occasion. They’re made out of flesh and bone, and we’ve probably all got at least one or maybe two in our closet. In recent years I’ve seen these social masks humans seem to enjoy wearing become more and more commonplace. You might wear your mask to work so you can get along with coworkers and your boss because the mighty dollar is more important now than just about anything, or you might wear one around your parents so you and they can continue the illusion that you all know and understand one another. Masks are often the fabric that binds a family together. But the most grotesque examples of masks are the ones worn among groups of so-called “friends.”

The computer is a mask itself in some ways. Many socially retarded people, besides just net stalkers, project an entirely different identity online. A lot of geeks who were beat up on in school can get really boisterous with their computer keyboards and turn out to be just what they often are - quiet self-conscious geeks - in person.

I’ve never been able to manage the art of wearing a mask among friends and I can barely pull off wearing one at work, which is why my employment record is so piss poor. I work much better by myself as a freelancer where the only person I can annoy is myself. But enough about me, I can only guess that these “dollers” who feel more comfortable living in a false and silent body behind masks are sad victims of a society that is becoming more and more sterile and unexcepting of any kind of social deviance and descent.

Of course I could be reading way too much into it all. The whole “doller” scene might just be a fetish filled fad that will disappear in a few years, but I can’t help having nightmarish visions of a future world where people only communicate in some kind of simple and thoughtless language by computers and cellphones while wearing strange masks, and refusing to befriend or fuck anything that isn’t made perfectly to their specifications and fulfills their every wish and desire. Unfortunately, that could probably also describe 2006 pretty accurately.