Bukkake can also mean a Japanese noodle preparation method (doused with miso soup). For that meaning, refer noodles.
Bukkake is a group sex practice wherein a series of men take turns ejaculating on a person, often female. There are strong overtones of erotic humiliation in this practice. Usually in bukkake videos, a beautiful young girl will sit and allow a group of men (sometimes more than a dozen) come up to her and openly masturbate until they ejaculate on her body (usually her face and mouth). The girl leaves the ejaculated sperm on her face as another man comes to repeat the routine. Often the scene ends with the girl swallowing the semen gathered. Producers of these films often attempt to find men who ejaculate a large amount. Often in the background of the these videos, men who are waiting for their turn can be seen masturbating to keep themselves erect. When the term bukkake is used in Japan, it usually refers to a method of preparing noodles and not the sexual act.

Bukkake is a Japanese invention, pioneered by such Japanese adult video companies as Shuttle Japan, Soft on Demand, and Moodyz in the first half of the 1990's. Some believe that one significant factor in the development of bukkake was the mandatory porn mosaic in Japan: since the directors could not show penetration they had to figure out new, visually-appealing ways to approach sex acts that would satisfy the audience without violating Japanese law.

One urban myth purports that the practice originated in feudal Japan as a method of punishing women who had comitted adultery; however, this is not true (its source is the imagination of the writer of a certain adult website, who concocted the story to entice readers to subscribe). At least one notable woman, Catherine Millet, has gone public regarding her sexual enjoyment of bukkake.

Fetish "forced bukkake" movies are popular in Japan. The typical plot features a naïve, uniformed schoolgirl or a demure pantyhosed office lady somehow finding herself in the predicament of being tied up and drenched with semen against her will.

Some time ago, bukkake began to appear as a theme in western commercial pornography, although without the orderly, processional tone of the Japanese original. One example which stands out is the American Bukkake series. In Europe, the GGG ("German Goo Girls") series has famously carried on the theme, though with much less emphasis on humiliation (in fact, the women are usually portrayed as enjoying the act) and uniforms (so-called Costume Play) than is seen in Japan, and more on extremely hardcore group sex.

Bukkake is the noun form of the Japanese verb bukkakeru (to dash [water]), and means simply "splash" or "dash". The compound verb can be decomposed into two verbs: butsu and kakeru. Butsu literally means to hit, but in this usage it appears to be an intensive prefix as in buttamageru, ("completely astonished") or butchigiri ("overwhelming win"). Kakeru in this context means to shower or pour. The word bukkake is often used in Japanese to describe pouring out water (or other liquids) with sufficient momentum to cause splashing.

Indeed, bukkake is more commonly used in Japan to describe a type of dish where the toppings are poured on top of noodles, as in bukkake-udon and bukkake-soba. Here the word presumably refers to the act of splashing fresh semen on a woman's face.

A "light" version of bukkake, known as gokkun, also exists. Gokkun is an onomatopoeia, which translates into English as "gulp," i.e., the sound one makes swallowing. In the adult video industry, this refers to swallowing semen, often a component of bukkake as well. People outside of Japan often mistake gokkun for bukkake.