Survey showcases squeeze strategies and scenarios.

With winter here, plenty of people are trying to fight off the cold with sweaters, coats, and pot after pot of hot tea or coffee. But there’s nothing quite as good at getting rid of the chill as a lover’s warm embrace, and so the timing was just right for Japanese website Mecha Comic to ask its users how they feel about hugs.

Mecha (pronounced “me-tcha”) Comic digitally publishes an extensive collection of shojo (girls’) manga, and it recently polled 1,054 of its users on the subject, starting with the simple question of whether or not they enjoyed being hugged in the first place. Given the prevalence of romance in shojo manga, it’s not surprising that the majority, 82 percent, said they liked a good squeeze. Only one percent had a blanket dislike of hugs, with the remaining 17 percent saying they didn’t have a strong feeling about them either way.

But there are all sorts of different ways to hold someone in your arms, so Mecha Comic’s next question was about how respondents liked to be hugged. The most popular was “a gentle hug from behind,” selected by nearly 700 participants. Rounding out the top three were “a tight hug from the front” and “a hug with our whole bodies pressed together.”

▼ Responses to “What kind of hug do you like?”
From top to bottom: tightly from the front, gently from behind, from the side with our shoulders touching, with our whole bodies pressed together, while gazing into each other’s eyes, while rubbing our cheeks together, with one part of our faces (forehead, nose) pressed against each other, and other (numbers indicate total votes)

Also part of the survey was a query about when respondents liked to be hugged. Mecha Comic didn’t provide any numerical data for this section, but says some of the most popular answers were “when I’m depressed and tired,” “when we say good-bye at the end of our date,” “when we make up after a fight,” and “when I’m not expecting it.”

Oh, and as the numbers for the “How do you like to be hugged?” graph indicate multiple answers, and thus conflicting answers were allowed, if you’ve got someone special to hug today, consider giving them more than one.

Source: Mecha Comic
Top image: Miyuki Mitsubachi/Hakusensha via Mecha Comic
Insert images: Mecha Comic, Azusa Mase/Kodansha via Mecha Comic
[ Read in Japanese ]