Survey reveals pitifully low numerical score women give their chests, seeks to answer if nipple size or bounciness is more important for ideal breasts.

As a society, Japan is pretty enamored with breasts. This is, after all, the land of the “breast slash” cafe, the annual Bioppai Beautiful Breasts contest, and a linguistic cornucopia of words that mean “boobs.”

But how do individual Japanese women feel about their own breasts? To find out, Himawari Life Insurance, as a tangent to its myriad breast cancer awareness programs, surveyed 1,000 Japanese women, 250 each in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, about what they feel makes a great pair of breasts, and also whether or not they’re pleased with the ones they have.

It turned out that most of the participants are not. When asked to rate their breasts on a scale of 1 to 100, the average score was a mere 46.1.

But hey, in some cases 46.1 out of 100 isn’t so bad. In baseball, for example, .461 would be a phenomenal batting average. However, this is just one of many ways in which baseball and boobs are different. When asked the more straightforward question of “Do you like your breasts?” only 21.1 percent of the women said they do, and even out of that group the majority were pretty lukewarm in their feelings.

Do you like your breasts?
● I like them: 4.8 percent
● I sort of like them: 16.3 percent
● I don’t like them very much: 25.5 percent
● I don’t like them at all: 19 percent
● I neither like nor dislike them: 34.4 percent

It doesn’t seem like this dissatisfaction stems from a desire for a larger chest. Respondents top picks for the ideal bust cup size were C, D, and B, which are also the three most common chest sizes in Japan.

What is your ideal breast size?
● C cup: 34.7 percent
● D cup: 26.9 percent
● B cup: 10.7 percent
● E cup 10 percent
● F cup: 3.2 percent
● Larger than F cup: 0.7 percent
● A cup: 2.8 percent
● No ideal size: 11 percent

So it would seem the largely critical attitude the survey participants have towards their own breasts comes from somewhere else, likely one of the factors they indicated would make them rate breasts highly.

What is the key element of ideal breasts?
● Bounciness/perkiness: 60.1 percent
● Upwards orientation: 49.6 percent
● Size and cleavage: 38.2 percent
● Softness to the touch: 32.4 percent
● Bright color on their top portion: 31.4 percent
● Smoothness: 27.1 percent
● Compact nipples: 23.1 percent
● No particular key element: 10.8 percent
● Other: 1 percent

Finally, the survey asked women if they’d ever been offended hearing a man talk about breasts, and the data showed the group to be fairly tolerant towards men waxing poetic on the topic.

Have you ever been grossed out by something a man said about breasts?
● Yes: 12.5 percent
● A little bit: 19.4 percent
● Not so much: 38.1 percent
● Not at all: 30 percent

Just a reminder, though, gentlemen. The question specifically asks if they were upset by “something a man said about breasts,” as in breasts in general. If you’re speaking directly to a Japanese woman about her breasts, unless you’re already in a physically intimate relationship you probably shouldn’t expect to have a 68.1 percent of her not slapping you across the face.

Source: Narinari via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso (1, 2, 3, 4)