Catch your breath, wipe the sweat, then put a hand to the belly. What is placed at the terminus of the story is not intercourse but the very moment of delivery. A genre exists that narrows its focus onto the scene where the time built up over the ten lunar months from pregnancy is released all at once.

Shussan-mono (Japanese: 出産もの, “childbirth works”) is the general term for the adult-work genre that depicts childbirth, that is, the very act of delivery, as the climax of the narrative. While making pregnancy the precondition of sexual pleasure, it places delivery, the consequence of that pregnancy, at the final point of sexual depiction, and is thereby positioned at the end point of the pregnancy-childbirth fetish group continuous with impregnation works, bote-bara (swollen-belly) works, and lactation works. It was established as a type, centred on doujinshi and adult games, from the 2000s onward.

Overview

The basic structure of shussan-mono lies in compressing the long time from pregnancy to delivery into a single story. The moment of conception (the intercourse scene), the process of the belly’s swelling, the foetal movement, the onset of labour, the giving-birth in a delivery room or sealed space, and the postpartum nursing or re-conception are often depicted continuously within a single doujinshi or work. The reader’s viewpoint is often designed to synchronise with the bodily sensation of the side that became pregnant, and diagrammatic depiction of the belly, the interior of the womb, and the birth canal occupies the core of the narrative device.

The subject is not limited to human women. The breadth that includes birth forms not normally assumed biologically is a feature of the genre: a human woman impregnated by a beast-man, a monster, or a tentacle; the birth of an egg-laying creature (egg-laying works); cross-species birth. A realist school that traces the delivery process described at an actual medical site and a fantasy school that abandons anatomical consistency and goes all-in on pleasure expression coexist.

In commercial distribution, “childbirth” is set up as an independent category in the search tags of DLsite and FANZA doujin, and it is recognised as a type with a purchase record. On Pixiv, a considerable number of “childbirth” tags also use R-18, and operation as adult content has settled citation needed.

Etymology and types

“Shussan-mono” is a combination of Japanese nouns, indicating the general term for works that thematise the event of childbirth. It circulated as doujin-world vocabulary in the 2000s and, through the development of search tags from the 2010s onward, settled as an independent classification in commercial distribution as well.

As subtypes within the genre, the following are observed:

• Ordinary childbirth works: the human birth of a human foetus by a human woman. The most realistic, with works that incorporate the depiction of obstetric medicine.
• Multiple-birth works: depicting the simultaneous delivery of twins, triplets, or more.
• Continuous-birth works: repeating conception, birth, and re-conception, with the character depicted like a “birthing machine.”
• Egg-laying works: depicting an egg-laying creature or a human woman who lays eggs. Often combined with tentacle works.
• Cross-species-birth works: depicting the birth of non-human existences such as monsters, beast-men, plants, and machines.

These are not strictly exclusive, and it is common for a single work to use multiple elements together.

History and development

Prehistory: Edo-period depiction of pregnant women and shunga

Visual expression depicting the body of a pregnant woman as an object of sexual love is already seen in the shunga of the Edo period. In the shunga of Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsushika Hokusai there are works on the theme of pregnant women, and a small number of pictorial materials depicting childbirth itself are also confirmed citation needed. The expression of this period, however, did not place childbirth at the theme of sexual pleasure but placed greater weight on positioning it as a symbol of motherhood, the cult of fecundity, and the cycle of life.

1950s–1980s: the marginalisation of the pregnant-woman fetish

From the postwar kasutori magazines, through the SM magazines of the 1970s, to the early erotic manga of the 1980s, pregnant-woman expression occupied a marginal position within sexual expression. A small number of authors thematised pregnant women and childbirth, but it did not reach the point of becoming independent as a genre.

1990s–2000s: becoming a genre in doujinshi

From the late 1990s into the 2000s, in the process by which the taste group centred on “impregnation” was systematised in the doujinshi and adult-game world, works that narrow their focus onto the act of childbirth as its consequence increased. Kaoru Nagayama’s Eromanga Studies (2006) organises the formation of pregnancy-childbirth-line expression of the same period as a pleasure device mixing a return to motherhood and a desire for possession.

The combination with tentacle works advanced through the 2000s. The continuous story of conception by tentacle, the in-body growth of a tentacle foetus, and the giving-birth from the birth canal established the standard form of the fantasy-leaning childbirth works.

2010s onward: becoming a commercial genre

Through the development of the search tags of DLsite and FANZA doujin, “childbirth” came to be operated as an independent product category. With the appearance of continuing series works by doujin authors and of specialised labels, it has settled as a genre with a stable purchase record. In the same period, Pixiv’s “childbirth” tag also maintained a certain number of submissions, functioning as an independent genre in the field of derivative creation as well.

Relation to related expressions

Pregnant women, bote-bara, and lactation are adjacent genres composing shussan-mono. Whereas pregnant-woman works thematise the body during pregnancy itself, and bote-bara narrows its focus onto the static visual of the belly’s swelling, shussan-mono narrows its focus onto the delivery event occurring at the terminus of the time axis. Lactation works treat the postpartum bodily response, and so are positioned on the direct continuation of shussan-mono.

The difference between nakadashi and impregnation works on the one hand and shussan-mono on the other lies in where the terminus of the narrative is placed. Whereas nakadashi closes the story at the moment of conception and impregnation closes it at the discovery of pregnancy, shussan-mono composes a single story including the long time up to delivery. For the reader, the very length of the temporal range functions as a pleasure device, and this is a feature of the genre.

Reception psychology

Regarding the reception psychology of shussan-mono, the debate in the doujin world is organised along two axes. The first is the interpretation as the extreme of the desire for possession. The mechanism of narratively completing the marking on the object, by depicting up to the irreversible event of conception by intercourse, the ten lunar months of bodily change, and delivery, gives the consumer strong satisfaction, on this view.

The second is the interpretation as an interest in bodily transformation itself. The process from pregnancy to delivery is a rare period in which the female body changes continuously, and the desire to track that change visually forms the substratum of the genre, on this view. On the latter standpoint, shussan-mono comes to be psychologically common, as one form of the bodily-transformation fetish, with enlargement works and the swelling-line genre.

From the viewpoint of gender theory, the very composition of consuming, from a male viewpoint, an event peculiar to the female body, namely childbirth, becomes an object of critical consideration. The relation between the mode of expression and the social context is a continuing point of debate in subculture studies.

Ethical boundaries

The expressive constraint of shussan-mono is concentrated in the distance-taking from actual medical events. Delivery is an event accompanied by bleeding, pain, and medical intervention, and when depicting it as a fictional pleasure expression, consideration for the safety of actual childbirth-experienced persons, medical workers, and pregnant women is in question. In commercial distribution, the setting of age and the explicit indication of fictionality are standardly operated, and expression directly modelled on actual pregnant women and infants is in effect excluded.

See also

• Pregnant women
• Lactation
• Impregnation
• Nakadashi
• Tentacle