On the night of October 15, the program “AKB Shirabe” on Fuji Television denoted Haruna Kojima to have the most beautiful chest of any member of the all-girl idol group AKB48.
The native of Tokyo topped a pool of 240 idols, which included affiliate groups NMB48 and SKE48.
Beauty is one thing, but size is something else. For the latter, Tokyo-based underwear manufacturer Diana in September released the results of a survey of the breasts of nearly 500,000 women living in Japan’s 47 prefectures and administrative districts between 2002 and 2013.
According to Shukan Post (Nov. 14), the ladies of Japan’s capital lag far behind those in Kagawa Prefecture, whose cups were crowned king.
“Since its founding in 1986, the company has accumulated detailed data on the shape and size of the breasts of women aged between 20 and 70 who have visited beauty salons at 800 locations across the country,” says a representative of the public relations division at Diana.
For the “Nationwide Breast Ranking,” the size was deemed to be the difference between chest measurements taken both across the nipples and at the base of the breast.
The results of the Diana survey reveal that the chests of gals in Kagawa average 15.6 centimeters; meanwhile Shimane (15.3) and Kochi (15.2), ranked second and third, respectively. Tochigi and Ehime round out the top-five.
Tokyo ranked a woeful 41st at 13.3, while the women of Wakayama (11.3) have the flattest chests in the nation. The nationwide average is 14.1 centimeters.
According to Diana, the data reflects a range of cup sizes spanning from A to C.
“In spite of our company’s experience in dealing with women, the conclusion that there is so much of disparity (in size) from region to region was surprising,” says the representative.
The results clash somewhat with that of a survey whose findings were released in 2012.
Tokyo-based firm LClove cosmetic, a marketer of sex aids sold via mail-order, revealed that the ladies of Kyoto and Gifu possess the nation’s most magnanimous mammaries. In the Diana survey, neither prefecture cracked the top-ten.
Naoko Shimada, a director specializing in mammary glands at the Pink Ribbon Breast Care Clinic Omotesando, says that bust size is proportional to the amount of sleep one receives.
“The secretion of estrogen and progesterone, both of which promote the growth of the breast, increases during the night while a woman sleeps,” says Shimada.
Yutaka Morita, a doctor and medical journalist, suggests examining the correlation between the consumption of soy beans, which contain isoflavones, a compound similar in chemical structure to estrogen, and regional bust size.
Shukan Post crunches the numbers. For soy bean consumption, ranking number five is Matsue City, Shimane Prefecture (a bust-rank of two). The city comes in second for soy sauce — the condiment whose top-ranking city is Komatsu, located in the bust capital of Kagawa.
Ryosuke Handa, a 15-year veteran of photographing women’s chests, was surprised to find three prefectures in Shikoku positioned in the Diana top-five.
“I’ve photographed more than 500 chests (in that area), and I’ve never gotten the feeling that their size or shape was special,” says the photographer.
Source: “47 Todofuken oppai rankingu,” Shukan Post (Nov. 14, pages 148-149)