Maybe Japan can’t beat the US. in the number of Olympics medals, but there’s one discipline where they take the lead.

A six-millimeter lead, to be precise. It’s not exactly an Olympic discipline, but as far as national pride goes, it‘s not to be underestimated.

It’s not swimming. It’s not running.

It’s penis size.

According to the latest, most comprehensive study to date using 500,000 males, the average length of a Japanese male’s erection is 13.56 centimeters (5.33 inches), with a diameter of 3.53 cm (1.39“) at the head and 3.19 cm (1.25”) at the shaft, writes Tokyo Reporter.

The statistic places Japanese males 10th worldwide, behind — among others — France, Australia, Italy, even Thailand, which according to Tenga boasts the largest penises in Asia.

But what the Tokyo Reporter was especially astonished about is that Japan placed ahead of the United States, which ranks 11th, with an average of 12.9 cm (5.08“).

More from GlobalPost: Penis sizes worldwide. Yeah, there's a map for that.

On the other side of the great penile divide were South Koreans, whose average of 9.6 cm (3.78”) made them the shortest among males in the 17 Asian countries for which measurements were available.



The survey was conducted by Tenga, a manufacturer of the world’s most popular male-masturbation merchandise.

I recently wrote about Tenga’s rising global reach of revolutionizing the art of masturbation. The company now sells its products in more than 40 countries, and claims to ship some 20 million units a year.

But because one size doesn’t fit all, the sex toy company now produces custom-made masturbators.

As Tenga puts in in its famous tagline: “Different strokes for different folks.“

This is where the survey comes in the picture.

In order to produce custom-made masturbation devices, they naturally need exact measurements from their customers.

Here's what the spokesperson for Tenga had to say about that to Tokyo Reporter:

“At our company web site, in December 2010 we set up a section called “Tenga Fitting... We wanted to be able to offer products that were ideally matched to the size of our customers’ penises. By February of this year we had obtained data on over 500,000 individuals, which made it possible to calculate average penis size.”

While I would certainly hate to diminish the scientific importance of this study, I do see a few problems with it:

The survey was conducted by a Japanese company. It is a bit peculiar that the Japanese came out of it significantly better than in the “Penis Size World Wide” website. There, Japan only averaged 10.92 cm (4.3”).

The results are based on self-measurement. Even though the measurements are used to make custom-made masturbators and we can assume it’s in the men’s best interest to be as precise as possible, I imagine men are more likely to unconsciously add a few centimeters, rather than deduct a few. Or maybe American men are just more honest with regard to their wieners? Then again, any Weiner reference probably won’t make my case stronger at this point.

The survey was only conducted among the 40 countries where Tenga sells its products. Once African and South American men develop an appetite for meticulously manufactured self-pleasuring tools, it might be a whole different ball game.

Take the Congo, as Tokyo Reporter smartly points out.

The Penis Size World Wide website ranks it first globally, with an average of 17.93cm (7.1 inches), followed by Ecuador (6.99“).

Incidentally, neither of these genitally rich countries has any Olympic medals this year.

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Unlike, say, China. Or South Korea.

Somebody should really do a study on the correlation between penis size and competitiveness in sports.