Onscreen kissing (first seen in 1896 in a film by Thomas Edison – yes, that Thomas Edison) is no longer taboo in Asian cinema for some time now. For those of you who watch contemporary Japanese and Korean TV serials, I wonder if you have noticed the difference in the way the actors perform an onscreen kiss.

The Koreans go for it – as I would say it, tenyeh baek punya. Check out this scene of Jung Woo-sung’s lower lip being tugged by Soo Ae from Athena: Goddess of War:

The Japanese actors don’t tenyeh as their Korean counterparts (for those of you going “… but Maria Ozawa got tenyeh what?”, please may I remind you that I’m talking about TELEVISION). Their lips simply touch in an oh-so-polite way. See this kiss between Ōmasa Aya and Kamenashi Kazuya from ヤマトナデシコ七変化 (The Wallflower):

Will the onscreen kiss ever make it to our shores? I simply doubt it and we all know why, for obvious reasons. The nearest you’d get to something local would be films from our neighbour across the straits. If you were to ask me to pick one (I’ve to admit that I’ve not seen that many Indonesian films), I think the best one was the two-timing snog between Wulan Guritno’s Miranda and her lover in Kabir Bhatia’s Love. The term huiyo comes to mind.