Menstrual Pain Simulation at Iwate University Festival [Even in a region with a closed culture... over 3 times the expected number of participants]
On Sunday, October 19, 2025, at the Iwate University Festival 'Kozukata Festival', we held a menstrual pain simulation at the booth of the Iwate University Gender Equality Students' Committee (GESCO), a student organization at Iwate University.
GESCO is active with the goal of "learning about gender equality and sharing it with Iwate University students," and since last year, they have been holding workshops as a place for learning about gender, with themes such as "period poverty" and "menstrual issues."
Additionally, a student belonging to GESCO received an award at the "'Comfortable Periods for Everyone' Summit 2024," a contest for speeches by students working to improve the environment surrounding menstruation, showing that they are engaged in progressive activities regarding "menstruation"!
Furthermore, led by the Iwate University Office for Gender Equality, they conducted a crowdfunding campaign to provide free sanitary napkins at Iwate University, achieving 125% of their goal.
Using a menstrual pain simulation kit from Kanazawa University
The menstrual pain simulation kit was developed by Nami Oda from the Youth Health Room, with whom we have long been conducting sex education activities, when he was a fourth-year student at Kanazawa University, in collaboration with a professor at the university. This menstrual pain simulation kit uses EMS (Electrical Muscle Stimulation) to send electrical signals to the muscles, reproducing the pain felt when the uterus contracts. Low-frequency electrical stimulation can reproduce pain similar to the deep, throbbing ache of menstrual cramps.
Over three times the expected number of participants!
The Iwate University Festival had many local residents visiting, much like a "local festival."
However, GESCO had told us in advance, "Most of the visitors to the university festival are local residents. Perhaps due to regional trends, there are few people interested in gender, and it would be good if about 20 people came to the GESCO booth..."
It seems that even for events held by GESCO in the past, it was considered good if about 10 Iwate University students or local residents participated, and it was difficult to find people interested in "gender equality" who would come to the events.
Therefore, for this menstrual pain simulation, we prepared for 10 to 20 people and set the event time from 11:30 AM to 3:30 PM, which was slightly shorter than other booths.
However, as soon as we started the simulation, many people came, to the point where a line formed immediately!
Throughout the event, so many people came continuously without a break that a total of about 65 people experienced menstrual pain.
The unexpected level of interest left me and the GESCO members surprised and flustered, and at one point, a situation occurred where we couldn't accommodate everyone who came. At such times, the GESCO members were wonderful, quickly and flexibly responding by creating numbered tickets and guiding the participants.
For university students, "menstruation" is something they want to know about to build better relationships with their partners
Many of those who came to experience it were couples in their 20s, students, and local married couples.
Couples in their 20s and local married couples stopped by after seeing the flyer for the menstrual pain simulation, with the thought that "I want my partner to experience the menstrual pain that women usually feel."
While recognizing that menstruation and menstrual pain are "important things that both men and women should know about," many people probably leave it vague as "something I want to know about someday" because there is no special opportunity to talk about it in daily life.
Since many people stopped by because they happened to see that they could experience menstrual pain, I felt that they were "actually" interested in menstruation and menstrual pain.
Also, many of the students were men. There were various reasons why they wanted to try the experience,
I see my girlfriend struggling with menstrual pain, so I want to experience it to deepen my understanding of her.
I am interested in medicine, so I want to experience menstrual pain.
I want to know how the menstrual pain experience kit works, so I would like to try it.
It seemed that they came to experience it out of curiosity like this.
It varies from person to person, but many people may get their first partner or engage in sexual activity after becoming university students. Also, I think many people start living alone or cohabiting.
Unlike high school, as physical intimacy with the opposite sex becomes more frequent, many students may have become interested in menstruation or recognized it as an important thing to know.
For university students, "menstruation" may be something they want to know about to build better relationships with their partners.
I think it is very difficult for adults to talk to their partners about sexual health, including menstruation. (It's not like you can do it just because you're an adult, right?)
However, during their university years, both they and their friends around them probably still don't know much about sex, andit is an important time to learn correctly about sex.
While university students gain a lot of freedom, they also start to bear responsibilities. Freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin, aren't they?
Correctly knowing about sexual health, including menstruation, becomes very important during university and in life thereafter.
"Actually" thinking it is an important thing to know about menstruation and menstrual pain
This time, it was only a menstrual pain experience, and we did not conduct a dialogue about realizations after the experience with the participants like in a workshop. However, I had them experience it while talking about realizations through the experience with me and GESCO members.
Among them, I feel that I and the GESCO members had many important realizations. One of them is"Actually thinking it is an important thing to know about menstruation and menstrual pain"that.
Often heard even while talking with GESCO members,
"Because it is a region with a closed and strong traditional sense of values, interest in gender is low."
"Many at Iwate University are from the Tohoku region. Since most students were raised with the values of the Tohoku region, there is a natural tendency toward male chauvinism."
those words.
In regions that value and inherit closed and classical cultures and values, there is still often a sense of annoyance toward gender equality and talk about sex.
However, young people raised in such regions perceive the changes of the times and"actually" recognize talk about gender equality and sex as an important thing to know as a human being.
I hope that adults will not treat talk about gender equality and sex as "annoying" and cover it up without interest, but will deepen their understanding of them as people living in the society of the future.
What is important is not to use approaches that do not fit the characteristics of the region by calling them "international standards," but to advance understanding of gender equality and talk about sex in accordance with the region's characteristics, culture, and values.
In that sense, organizations aiming for gender equality composed of students attending local universities like GESCO have a deep understanding of the region and have the potential to carry out initiatives and approaches suited to the region!
While "sex education" is often shunned as a taboo subject, I am grateful that so many people were able to experience it! Thank you very much for the wonderful exhibition opportunity at the university festival!
I would like to continue holding menstrual pain experiences all over Japan in the future.
It can be held on various occasions such as regional events and corporate training, so please contact us!
Contact information:cplus.cosmos@gmail.com
* Due to personal information, there are few photos that can be posted.