Japanese singles seek dolls for comfort

Each has a name. Ta-Bo often watches television with his toys before bathing them, powdering them so that their skin feels more human, dressing them in lingerie and then taking them to bed.

"A human girl can cheat on you or betray you sometimes, but these dolls never do those thing. They belong to me 100 percent," says the engineer who has spent more than 2 million yen ($16,000) over the past decade on the dolls.

"Sometimes it takes too much time before I can have sex with the person I meet. But with these dolls, it's just a matter of a click of the mouse. With one click, they are delivered to you."

The man, who says he has had sex with five women but prefers the dolls, is one of a gradually increasing, though secretive, group of Japanese men who have given up on women.

A Japanese maker said it started producing its life-sized and anatomically correct dolls 30 years ago, targeting initially handicapped men who might find it difficult to find a partner.

Orient Industry Co. now makes 80 dolls a month in an eastern Tokyo factory to nine designs that sell for between $850 and $5,500 each. The more expensive models are made of silicon and have 35 movable joints.