A unnamed 33-year old Japanese electrical equipment shop worker was discovered dead on the floor of his parents house by his mother after performing autoerotic asphyxiation, according to the Daily Mail.
The man was found laying in his bedroom with a belt wrapped around his neck and wore purple gas mask and plastic bag around his head
Paramedics quickly took him to the hospital, but he was confirmed dead from suffocation.
The postmortem report on the case released by Dr Hiroshi Ikegaya and his team in 'Legal Magazine' in May ruled out suicide and said the man had no history of mental illness.
Investigators did however claim that the man had a "masochism" or "bondage" fetish citing the array of pornography, magazines, and sex toys discovered in his wardrobe as well as images of people bound in BDSM and sex gear on his computer.
Dr Hiroshi Ikegaya concluded in the report that "Because of the circumstances at the time of discovery and the fact that it was a sudden death, we considered the cause of death to be suffocation."
The suffocation was determined to be resultant from an autoerotic asphyxiation act or "the accidental death of an individual while masturbating, caused by a device or material used to enhance the sexual response".
The Kyoto team gave other examples of people in Japan who had died in comparable cases, claiming that 0.1 and 0.6 per million people die in similar situations with rates varying by country.
They also said their research could be helpful in determining how autoerotic asphyxiation in Japan was similar to elsewhere in the world and gave insight into what police and coroners should look at when discerning causes of death.
The report highlights the danger of autoerotic asphyxiation, the process of restricting airflow while masturbating for sexual pleasure.
According to Forensic Magazine, once the heart no longer has enough energy to move from lack of oxygen, it will go into a cardiac arrest.
It can take just a single minute to pass out and just a few minutes more to die.
