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Every year the Japanese buy some 580 million condoms, more per person
than any other nation. But not necessarily from any great love of rubber.
Thirty years after it sparked a sexual revolution in the West, the oral
contraceptive has yet to be authorised for sale in Japan. Fears over its
safety, the powerful influence of doctors fond of lining their pockets
with abortion fees, and more recently the spectre of HIV have all conspired
to keep the pill out of Japan’s birth control clinics. As a result, the
condom is still king – 80 per cent of couples use them – and manufacturers
vie for customers with ever more sensitive wares sold in ever more exciting
packets.

With names like ‘Tight’, ‘X-rated’ and ‘Loveme’, Japanese condoms can
make Britain’s look dowdy and clinical. You can forget stale images of hand-holding
couples. One popular Japanese make, in homage to pop art, shows a reclining
woman with straw-blond hair whispering the brand name ‘Excalibur’.

The lack of coyness doesn’t end there. Take the unusual architecture
of the Tokyo headquarters of Fuji Rubber Incorporated, one of Japan’s three
main manufacturers. On top of a squat office block on an otherwise demure
city street stands a condom-shaped tower. A fitting symbol, perhaps, for
an industry which is now competing for foreign markets.

Already Sagami Rubber, another of Japan’s ‘big three’, supplies virtually
all condoms sold in Switzerland and about two-thirds of those sold in Scandanavia
and France. British customers are proving harder to woo. Last year Sagami’s
partnership with a Scottish distribution company faltered after its flagship
European product, ‘Le Condom’, failed to meet sales targets. But major Western
manufacturers like the London Rubber Company, makers of Durex, are still
watching their backs.

The scene is now set for what could turn into a fierce battle of technical
wit and marketing propaganda. Japanese condoms are famous for being the
most sensitive in the world – and it is precisely this accolade which scientists
at the LRC are now fighting for. The key to their campaign will be condoms
made from a novel polyurethane film, the nature of which is being kept a
closely guarded secret.

Japan’s manufacturers claim to make safe and reliable latex condoms
that are considerably thinner than the 60 to 80-micro-metre thick versions
sold by most manufacturers in Europe and the US. The secret, says Hisashi
Ohi, Sagami’s quality control director, is in the vulcan-isation – how
much sulphur you add to the raw latex and how long and at what temperature
you then heat the resulting mixture.

Sagami Rubber also prides itself on the evenness of its latex films
– a key to strength. One test of reliability involves measuring the pressure
and volume at which an inflated condom bursts. ‘The evenness of the latex
film is especially important here,’ says Ohi.

But will these perfectly-crafted products and their awesome reputation
falter before the new polyurethane condom? The material – the product of
eight years of intensive research – is twice as strong as normal latex,
says Bill Potter, scientific director of LRC. ‘This means we can make condoms
twice as thin which still pass US and European reliability tests.’ But
this is not the only advantage, he hastens to add: the condom is also odourless,
transparent, and won’t dissolve in petroleum jelly.

But what about elasticity? The great thing about rubber condoms, notes
Ohi, is that they can expand by 800 per cent, which means that one size
does for all. The recently launched female condom is made of polyurethane
and has been likened by many to a shapeless freezer bag. Is the same fate
to befall the new male condom? No, says Potter, the material is definitely
elastic, if a little less so than latex.

Victory to LRC in the high-tech condom stakes? Not necessarily, for
it’s an open secret that the Japanese condom makers, while still selling
latex, are developing new condom materials which are almost certainly
based on polyurethane. And Japanese manufacturers already have a line of
ultra-ultra thin condoms they have never tried to sell in the West. Conservative
regulations for condom thickness have been one barrier, but the Japanese
see another barrier – those clumsy gaijin (foreigners). ‘Many Japanese people
have handled thin condoms for years,’ explains Kotaro Morikawa politely,
an international marketing manager with Sagami Rubber. ‘They are skilled
enough to use them without accidents.’