About

The Six Hours For Sex (Japanese: 性の6時間, Sei no Roku Jikan ) is a Japanese internet slang referring to the hours between 9 PM on December 24th and 3 AM on December 25th, Christmas Day. Spread from the Japanese textboard community 2channel, this expression has been annually circulating on the Internet during the Christmas season since the mid-2000s.

Origin

Christmas in Japan is a non-religious and commercial-driven event, which is heavily associated with a romantic date for lovers, similar to Valentine's Day, leading many to link the event with sexual activity. For example, the Japanese nickname for Christmas, "the Holy Night" (聖夜, Seiya), has been jokingly dubbed as "The Sexual Night" (性夜, Seiya) since the pre-internet era. The coinage of this word is under the influence of this situation of this country's Christmas.

Meanwhile, the word "The Six Hours for Sex" appeared in public as a form of copypasta in the first half of 2000s. Though it's unknown exactly when and who coined it, 2channel's thread archives suggest that one of the oldest posts including this word was posted to a thread in /gline/ board in November 2003.^[1]

Translation:

"The Six Hours for Sex" is from 9 PM on December 24th to 3 AM on the 25th. The largest number of people have sex at this hour:

All your neighbors and friends has sex. There is no exception.
That cute girl always talking with you has sex.
That beautiful lady with whom you're in unrequited love has sex.
If you have daughters or sisters and they aren't at home, they definitely have sex.
Your ex-girlfriend does what you did with her, with another man.
Your future girlfriends and wife moan in pleasure by other men's stuff.

Spread

Around 2004-2005, this cold-tone text, which draws desperation from people who are unable to join in on the special event, became an infamous copypasta often found in 2channel's many boards. Then, the word "Six Hours for Sex" spread beyond the anonymous community via matome blogs, online glossaries^[2][3][4][5], Twitter^[6], and has established itself as the alternative name of the holy night throughout late 2000s. Particularly, an annual online event entitled "Investigation against Female Voice Actors in Christmas," which had caught much attention between 2009 and the mid-2010s, heavily used this copypasta to agitate otaku people. And "Himote" (非モテ, lit. "Not Popular" or "Can't Become Popular"), another online neologism that expresses non-popular people's status and self-consciousness, also gave much visibility to the word because the momentum of self-deprecating, and sometimes offensive, online discourses got boosted by the word's coinage in the same period. Additionally, the rule of "The Six Hours for Sex" is occasionally adopted to the Valentine's Day.

Copypasta copied from a 2005 thread

Karate Punch Event

On December 24th, 2010, a thread titled "I'm planning to strike karate punches for 6 hours to correct the six hours for sex" was posted to 2channel's /news4vip/ board^[7], which joke thread's manner came from a pun for the holy/sexual night (Seiya) and Seiken Duki (正拳突き), a name of Karate's fore-fist punch in Japanese. Through the board users' favorite game "anchor designation," the poster came to actually strike the punches during the hours at Sankaku Kouen park, Osaka on Christmas Eve. This performance in 2channel turned into an annual event named "The Six Hours for Karate Punch" (正の6時間, Sei no Roku Jikan), even after the original sessions organized by the originator ended in the following year. The event has been held at multiple locations and are sometimes covered by matome blogs and online gossip news sites.^[8][9]

Search Interest

External References