Ikebukuro

Sex-trade tabloid Tokyo Manzoku News to cease publication

By CJ • April 25, 2010

The sex-service tip sheet will be issued for the final time next month

Down and out in Ikebukuro

By CJ • February 6, 2010

A pachislo machine down on its luck in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district.

Police vice raids provide fodder for year-end ‘tokuban’ TV specials

By Kazutaka Shimanaka • December 5, 2009

A customary part of TV fare during the final week of December is the so-called “police action close-up.” These are special programs in which TV camera crews follow around Tokyo’s finest as they sanitize the city, bursting into bars and busting bordellos.

Naughty ladies cause Ikebukuro ‘mistress bank’ to go bust

By Kazutaka Shimanaka • November 22, 2009

Japan’s first “Aijin Banku”(mistress bank) in Osaka back in the 1970s created quite a stir at the time of its founding. The service, which made its money by serving as a go-between between women seeking steady employment in a prone position and men who could afford it, gradually disappeared, to be replaced by such customer-direct transactions as enjo kosai (“compensated dating”).

Election spurs erections, no pun intended

By Kazutaka Shimanaka • September 2, 2009

It didn’t take the tabloid media long to put its own original spin on the landslide Aug. 30 victory by the Democratic Party of Japan. Shukan Shincho (Sep. 10) reports on some of the ways the sex industry took advantage of political excitement in the run-up to last Sunday’s general election.

Subjugated salarymen opt for real sex over staged ‘sekuhara’

By Kazutaka Shimanaka • August 3, 2009

In its ongoing series about bubble-era sex businesses that went from boom to bust, Nikkan Gendai (Aug. 1) introduces an “image club” (imekura) that opened its doors in the summer of 1993. Billing itself as a sekuhara (sexual harassment) club, it featured female staff, decked out in the spiffy uniforms typically worn by “office ladies,” whose bodies were freely available for such activities as crotch-sniffing and groping from the neck down.