For anyone who has been interested in Japanese pop culture and have had the opportunity to visit the country, to partake in the culture and to be passionate about it, I have had the opportunity to meet two type of men in my life who love Japan. The type who love the culture and literally be absorbed by it and those who not only look at Japan as an opportunity to make money and the opportunity to get laid.
As a person who has written about Japanese pop culture, I am of the former but there are so many people I have went to college with, worked with who are part of the latter. Men who love Japanese women, men who have been absorbed by the sexual part of the culture through hentai/ecchi manga and anime, Japanese porn and/or gravure models.
And once you arrive to Japan, the sex is a big part of the culture and you can find it all around you. Stores, vending machines and even your Japanese guy friends who are willing to tell you about Japanese women, Japanese love hotels and much more. Especially Westeners or other fellow gaijin who are willing to tell you about their exploits on the subway or at a restaurant.
“Black Passenger Yellow Cabs” by Stefhen FD Bryan is a book about a man who not only craves Asian women, he is a man with a sexual addiction, who went to Japan and is now writing about his personal experiences and sexual exploits.
Stefhen is originally from Jamaica and at a young age, was already well-endowed and was taken advantage of by younger women. To put it bluntly, he was raped as he was only a young boy who didn’t know any better, but this was life in Jamaica and it was what lit the match that would burn inside him for many years to come.
Bryan would write, “I grew to become a lesbian happily trapped in a man’s body and from my first sexual experience until recently, sex was the first thing I thought of upon meeting every woman.”
Stefhen is passionate about Asian women and he details in his book of how his interested shifted to Asian women and what brought him to Japan. Not long after living in Japan, Stefhen was having a lot of sex with Japanese women. I know for a fact that many Japanese women I knew had always enjoyed Black actors and athletes and also music performers and for Stefhen, he was a Black man who was their Bob Marley or Jay-Z, and he was there to teach them English and somehow he ended up having sex with women, their mothers, fellow teachers and he writes about each women and his experience with them.
Some may look at how this book was written as glorified bragging on Bryan’s part and in a way, it may appear that way but part of me was not looking at Stefhen as a guy I wanted to high five and say “you’re the man” or looking at a major mac daddy. This was a man who writes about his experience but knowing he had a sexual addiction. And it’s important to note that there are books in which people write about sex and their exploits in passing off tips to those who want to get laid, but this is not one of those books. This is an intellectual man who writes this book intelligently but smart enough to know that the topics he writes about is something that he should not become too esoteric.
Not only does he write about his experience of being a horny man who can’t wait to partake in sex with a woman, but we also get an explanation of Japan culture, an explanation of his state of mind, his living conditions and even his challenges.
From early in the book in which he writes about his first experience of a 16-year-old taking advantage of him at the age of 7, we see how this plays out. Having sex with a Japanese girl named Ai and then one day alone with her mother, she jokes about him (again, he does make the point that women keep telling him of how well-endowed he is) and similar to the boy at age 7, he whips it out for his girlfriends mother to partake in and how the mother hasn’t had any pleasure for twenty years because of work. Stefhen brings up how Japanese men are overworked and are never home and then gives us statistics of those who are overworked in Japan. Interesting but yet related tangent but that is how “Black Passenger Yellow Cabs” works. You get a little story about his sexual exploits but also teaching the reader about Japanese culture.
While this book does go into his exploits with Japanese women, he also goes into his sexual experience with Chinese, Korean and other women of a variety ethnicities that he had sex with as well. Needless to say, there are many women that Stefhen FD Bryan has slept with and part of me was growing tired of reading about the exploits. I looked at this book as a man who was raped at a young age and now acting out of what he thought women were about…sexual pleasure and I couldn’t wait to get to the end because I was hoping that he would get help. At the rate he was going, not only was I wondering how many diseases he may get (or spread – the Dr. Akari chapter was quite surprising to say the least), I often wondered if there was anyone in his life to tell him that “enough was enough”.
Unfortunately, if you are a foreign teacher and you’re moving around and you meet other gaijin (foreigners) of guys who want to get laid, they are just going to support the habits of one getting all he can get and in this case, Japan was like a buffet and the ending was like a buffet, you get tired of it.
It’s important to note that Stefhen Bryan did get help with his depression and he did get help to understand what happened to him at a young age, but I use the “buffet” as a metaphor because like any buffet, we all get tired when we had our fill but it doesn’t take long for us to get over that and partake in another buffet. Is Stefhen Bryan really done? Was the book a therapeutic way to deal with a lot of women he has slept with and put it into perspective?
I can see many guys reading this book, learning from Stefhen’s ways and also learning about Japan at the same time. I can also see people reading this book and learning what goes through the minds of some men, especially foreigners but it’s important to note that one should not be judgmental on foreigners, especially on Black men who are in Japan and are also Black and are teaching in Japan. There is enough stereotyping and a blind ignorance that pervades Japanese culture towards foreigners to note that all gaijin are not in Japan to get laid (and I know many of my guys friends in Japan will then tell me – not if you’re in Roppongi).
But not all of Bryan’s book is about having sex, there is some important factual information and one of the chapters that I found quite interesting was his chapter on “Abortion in Japan” but his experience was afterward with a girl named Fu and how he had to experience a Japanese and their cultural tie to their parents. I know first hand how that feels and where in America, things are a bit different, in Japan, blood is thicker than water and in most cases, blood will win over love most of the time.
I did find it interesting to find these breaks in chapters where we go from one chapter about a woman and then the next chapter, we would see Stefhen focus more on Japanese culture. For example, he would talk about Shoko and then we would read a very informative chapter on socialization in Japan from women’s empowerment to child abuse in Japan and then news stories of murders in Japan and then back to Shoko. Interesting way the book is structured but I look at it as being a non-traditional book, so I was OK with it.
“Black Passenger Yellow Cabs” is a book that I know many guys will enjoy because I know way too many men who would love to be in Stefhen Bryan’s shoes. But I’m not one of those men. I came away reading this book, not happy nor excited but part of me felt sorry for Stefhen FD Bryan. I’m sure many men may think it’s all cool if you can have partake in as many women as possible in Japan and look at Stefhen Bryan as a hero but I don’t. If anything, may it be that he is done or even if he unfortunately relapses, he finds that one woman in his life that is not a sexual object but a woman that he can truly love.
Overall, “Black Passenger Yellow Cabs” is well-written, well-researched but I wish more time was given towards the final chapters on the resolution because the book ends rather abruptly. Nevertheless, the book was quite entertaining, sexually-charged, yet intelligently written that under all the detailed sexual experiences featured in the book, you can still learn a little bit about Japanese society and culture. If you are looking for book on Japanese culture and sex, this book is for you!
