I agree there is definitely a cultural difference on perceptions of femdom [...] being put in a shameful position in public could be seen as worse than actually debilitating physical pain or "being used" [...] but this is not my quib with J femdom.
Mainly, it's the fact that I suspect many of the developers of J femdom games only look at it from a male perspective of what would be/would not be shameful and do not factor in how a dominant woman would actually think at all, and I'd say this is evidenced by how many times in these games you have blowjobs, hand/footjobs etc and how few times the
male character has to perform oral himself, is put longterm in chastity, has to worship the female rather than just "resist ejaculation" when she is doing everything etc. All of the aforementioned acts are taboo, so why the prevalence of acts centered around arousing the male actor and male orgasm? I suspect it's got more to do with capitalism, with what some studios believe their target audience (submissive men in Japan) would be attracted by, than with culture, and I welcome any counterpoints to this.
Actually, I think the cultural difference (different perspective) goes a bit deeper than you're describing here. The point, I think, is not whether these acts are "all taboo" but whether or not they are "femdom" (or "femdom ENOUGH") in Japanese culture. You see -- and maybe you know their culture better, you seem to know more about their literature than I do --, my impression about sex in traditional Japan is that the woman was very passive and the male very active. So, when you now get all those "blowjobs, hand/footjobs" etc., what you're getting (from, I imagine, a Japanese perspective) is a woman who is NOT being passive, who is taking the active role, and playing with her boytoy to get that precious semen that he wants to keep inside (so as not to lose his masculine power) out in the open where she can do whatever she wants with it. In other words, from this perspective, all those acts -- where the man is reduced to inactivity -- are VERY "femdommy."
Now, from a Western perspective, which is more centered on pleasure than on semen and the active/passive dichotomy (it seems as a culture we already agree that it's better if women are not just "lying there and thinking of England" during sex: they should at least move and scream things like "YES! Oh my god! Oh Yeah baby!" -- apparently, in the American sexual imaginary, the louder the woman, the better the sex; I find it hard to imagine traditional Japanese imagery would agree). So we look at all those scenes and "don't see" the domme actually using the guy as her toy and getting that precious semen out of him that he'd do anything not to give her; what we see is something more like a skilled prostitute just getting her client off or something like that. Not very "femdommy" -- but this is NOT in the action itself, but rather in OUR INTERPRETATION of what is going on. (To see how the Japanese DO interpret these scenes as way more "femdommy," listen to the voices in the VNs in which female characters do that: they are often full of scorn for the man, laughing at the guy and mocking him for not resisting, i.e., for not being "manly," and ignoring all his attempts to take control or even to just stop what is going on.)
And this kind of thing fascinates me. That two different cultures could look at the same scene and see two different (almost opposite) things is evidence to the importance that culture and enculturation have in our very perception of what is going on when two people interact -- as if there never were such a thing as a "direct" interaction between humans, only "mediated" interactions with all kinds of possible cultural misunderstandings. Humans are indeed fascinating little devils, aren't they?
Note,
en passant, that this doesn't necessarily disprove the male-oriented perspective that you were arguing for (it's perfectly compatible), but it does imply that one needs more information to prove it. Claiming that female characters who are behaving in a (to Japanese culture) extremely domineering way, disregarding what the male wants or doesn't want, mocking him for not being able to defend himself and protect the one thing he doesn't want to give her BECAUSE (the authors think that) getting a blowjob/handjob/titjob etc. is pleasant to the male... is, I suppose, possible, but this would be like arguing that, in Western femdom fiction, the domme berates and mocks the male's cock, locks him in chastity, makes him lick her pussy and then whips him BECAUSE (the authors think that) being denied sex, being used for her orgasms, being whipped etc. is pleasant to the male subs. (I could imagine a traditional Japanese saying that these things would indeed be good for the male because they increase his endurance, which is a good thing for a Samurai, training in martial arts often involved denying oneself obvious sources of pleasure, etc.) In both cases, this opinion is WRONG: a vanilla male in either cultures would NOT appreciate or enjoy these situations. Only femdom lovers would -- in both cases.
So in the end this is like comparing taste in gardens (Japanese gardens are very different from, say, Dutch gardens), or in temples (Japanese shrines are much less impressive than Christian cathedrals), etc. These things make more sense within a richer understanding of the culture, and attributing them to external influences like capitalism and whatnot, well... should be done with great care and a lot of good evidence. "Capitalism" is such a recent concept in Japanese culture, like, say, anime in Western culture... I'm not sure how much influence or explanatory value they can already claim.
As for Peniban, I will try it and get back to you! In my case it's also noteworthy that mind control and domination in and of itself, even non-sexual, (as in, being ordered around or manipulated by a woman for her own ends) is a turn on, so if your description is right and it is about "diminishing or eliminating male pleasure", it might well have the opposite effect lol... Still, thanks a lot for the suggestion!
I'm guessing you will enjoy it. Yes, there is some of the "we want to get his semen!" stuff (as I recall, the hero's semen plays an important part in the Doma religion), but after the first couple of times I think you'll agree that how exactly they milk his semen is anything but pleasant; and their contempt for him is so clearly obvious, and they make him do so many other more "traditionally Western" subby things, that maybe you'll enjoy it more. One little thing I liked, for instance, is that the MC never gets any lines. You find out what he's saying from the reaction of his female companions... so the very hero of the story is symbolically silenced. I find that delightfully charming. On the other hand, though, there is no animation, and the illustrations are not always very high-quality; it's the text and the voice acting (the VAs are great at mocking the MC...) that do the job. Warning: especially near the end, it can get pretty extreme.
