Regulative production: Genre formation and institutional change in the Japanese adult video industry

This article introduces ‘regulative production’ to theorise regulation as a constitutive force within cultural industries. Moving beyond the production–consumption binary, it argues that regulation is not merely an external constraint but an institutional mechanism that reorganises production, circulation and genre formation. Through a historical analysis of the Japanese adult video industry, the article examines the mid-1990’s transition from the rental-centred inspection regime dominated by the Nihon Ethics of Video Association (Biderin), to the pluralised, retail-oriented framework associated with the Media Ethics Association (Medirin). This restructuring redistributed industrial risk, diversified circulation channels and destabilised the hierarchy between tantai , a style of production centred on a single actress, and kikaku , which emphasises story-based production, thereby enabling the hybrid genre kikatan . The case demonstrates how legal ambiguity, self-regulation and market organisation jointly shape aesthetic boundaries and gendered labour hierarchies, positioning regulation as embedded in, and formative of, cultural production itself.