Ancient Japanese Sex Manual Says: Have Sex More, Finish Less
- JELQ2GROW
- 35 minutes ago
- 6 min read
If Tamba Yasuyori, a 10th-century Japanese court physician, could see modern Pornhub habits and how much we nut in a week, he’d probably faint.
His vision of sex and health is still sitting in Tokyo’s imperial archives, in the Ishinhō, a 30-scroll medical compendium he finished in 984. Scroll 28 is basically a manual on longevity through sex. It talks about jingqi, a vital life force, and tells men to cultivate it through long, gentle lovemaking… while only ejaculating three times out of ten.
In other words: have lots of sex, just don’t always “hit send.”
The 3-out-of-10 rule 💦 ③
Scroll 28 leans on older Chinese Taoist sex traditions: slow foreplay, synchronized breath, deep kissing, and extremely controlled arousal. The man is encouraged to reach high levels of pleasure, even orgasm, while keeping semen inside his body. The text explicitly says consummation should happen roughly three times in ten encounters, preferably when trying to conceive.
The logic is simple for its time:
Semen = dense life force.
Losing it too often = premature aging.
Circulating that energy internally = vitality and long life.
Women, interestingly, are told to climax as much as they like. Female orgasm is seen as strengthening yin energy, while male ejaculation is framed as a loss of yang.
So this isn’t some ancient “no one gets to come” rule. It’s “she should come, you should… choose your moments.”
Enter telomeres, spermidine and modern biohacking 🧬 💥
Fast-forward a thousand years. Oxford physiologist Denis Noble and entrepreneur Leslie Kenny start reading these scrolls and wondering if any of this could map to modern biology.
A few pieces line up loosely:
Spermidine, first isolated in semen, supports cell “self-cleaning” (autophagy) and appears to slow several hallmarks of aging in lab and animal models.
A 2017 study found that couples who reported recent sexual intimacy had longer telomeres, the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, compared with non-intimate couples, even after accounting for relationship satisfaction and stress.
Oxytocin, heavily released with affectionate touch, sex, and orgasm, is being explored for anti-inflammatory and potential anti-aging effects.
Kenny’s speculative leap is: if semen is rich in spermidine and other nutrients, maybe retaining it lets the body reabsorb those goodies and support longevity.
Important nuance: that idea hasn’t been directly proven in humans. The spermidine longevity research so far mostly involves diet or supplements, not edging for the emperor.
So… is semen retention “scientifically proven”? 📄 🔬
Short answer: no.
When doctors and health writers review the evidence on semen retention, they generally land here:
There’s no strong clinical evidence that avoiding ejaculation boosts testosterone long-term, supercharges health, or unlocks some special energy mode.
At the same time, choosing to ejaculate less often isn’t inherently dangerous for most healthy men (as long as you’re not ignoring pain, blue-balls level discomfort, or other symptoms).
There are a few small, older lab studies that get cited in NoFap circles. One 2003 experiment with 28 men found that after an ejaculation, testosterone stayed roughly stable for several days, then spiked around day seven of abstinence before dropping again.
Cool little hormonal blip? Yes. Clear proof that retaining semen for weeks or months makes you superhuman? Not really.
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Other research looks at semen quality, mainly for fertility treatment. Some work suggests that shorter abstinence, up to and including daily ejaculation, can improve certain sperm parameters in some men, while longer abstinence changes volume and concentration. That’s more about pregnancy odds than life span.
So far, mainstream medical reviews basically say: semen retention is safe for most, but documented health benefits are speculative.
Where science actually gets interesting: ejaculation & cancer risk
Here’s the twist that never makes it into “No Nut” memes: when researchers track thousands of men over decades, higher ejaculation frequency often looks protective, not harmful.
A large U.S. cohort study published in European Urology followed men for many years and found that those who ejaculated more frequently throughout adulthood were less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, especially low-risk disease.
A 2024 narrative review again highlighted that more frequent ejaculation tends to correlate with lower prostate cancer risk in several studies, though the mechanisms and exact “dose” remain debated.
The current thinking: ejaculating regularly may help flush out potentially carcinogenic secretions from the prostate or signal healthier hormonal and lifestyle patterns overall.
So if someone tells you “science proves you should never ejaculate,” that’s… not what the data say.
But sex itself does look like longevity medicine 🩺 💥
Where Ishinhō starts to vibe with modern research is not in the semen math, but in how it treats sex:
as slow, ritualised, emotionally present,
as something that regulates the whole body, not just the genitals.
Sexual intimacy shows up again and again in health research as a possible buffer for aging and stress:
Couples reporting more affectionate, supported intimacy often show better perceived health and lower stress markers.
The telomere study mentioned earlier found longer telomeres in sexually active couples versus a similarly “happy” but less intimate control group.
Oxytocin release with cuddling, kissing, and sex interlocks with systems that affect inflammation, blood pressure, and mood.
The scrolls obsess over slow touch, shared breath, eye contact, and that feeling of bodies syncing up. Modern labs are basically saying: “Yeah, that level of contact seems to be good medicine.”
What you can actually do with all this as a modern guy 🤔 😉
So you’re not an emperor, you don’t have a harem, and your main scroll is your phone. What now?
You can steal practices from Scroll 28 without turning your life into a purity challenge:
Play with the “not every time” rule
Spacing out ejaculations can, for some guys, mean less post-nut crash, more stamina, and a stronger sense of control over arousal. It’s also a way to see how your body reacts when orgasm isn’t the automatic endpoint every single time.
Pick a window, say over the next 10 sexual encounters or solo sessions, and deliberately choose a few where you don’t ejaculate.
Focus on breathing, slowing down, and riding waves of arousal.
Let your partner’s pleasure take the lead more often.
Notice how you feel later that day: energized, frustrated, neutral?
Make at least some sex slow sex
That doesn’t need incense and gongs. It can be:
15 minutes of just kissing, breathing, and touching before anyone reaches for genitals.
Eye contact you actually stay in for more than two seconds.
Letting your movements be stupidly gentle for a while, then building up.
Treat ejaculation as a choice, not a default
Automatic pattern: arousal → thrusting → come → sleep.
Alternative pattern in your toolkit:
arousal → building pleasure → backing off → shifting to hands or mouth → maybe you finish, maybe you don’t. Having options is the real flex.
Stay realistic about “benefits”
You might notice:
better stamina,
feeling less wiped after sex,
more sense of control over your arousal.
Those are valid, even if no researcher has measured your telomeres. If you start getting chronic testicular pain, intense irritability, or weird symptoms, that’s a sign to ease up and, if needed, talk to a doctor.
The real gift of the scroll 📜 🎁
You don’t need to follow a 3-out-of-10 ejaculation ratio, worship your semen, or sign up for a NoFap crusade. You can simply decide that:
sex is allowed to be slow,
your partner’s orgasm matters at least as much as yours,
and your body deserves curiosity instead of autopilot.
Maybe that adds years to your life. Maybe it just makes the years you get feel less like a highlight reel of rushed endings. There’s also a side to this that no study fully catches: for some men, sex done this way starts to feel like a practice, almost spiritual, in the way it grounds you in your own body and in the person you’re with. If that idea resonates, the only real test is how you feel as you fold these habits into your week, energy, mood, focus, and connection. You’re not a data point on a chart; you’re one guy figuring out what works.
Either way, if an ancient Japanese sex manual pushes you to have more intentional, connected sex, and sometimes not finish, your future self probably won’t complain.