Tokyo’s Kabukicho teeters on the brink

Once known as Asia’s top entertainment quarter, Shinjuku Ward’s red-light district of Kabukicho has seen a hallowing out at its core. Monthly magazine Takarajima (April) takes a look at the devastation wrought by police crackdowns and the ongoing recession.

At the end of 2008, the multi-use Koma Stadium, notably known as a home to enka theater performances for a half-century and situated at the heart of Kabukicho, shut its doors. Over a year later, a construction plan for the site has not been set in place. Meanwhile, near JR Shinjuku Station, a large 10-screen cinema complex has since opened at the edge of the Kabukicho boundary. This encroachment, which has forced the shuttering of other long-running theaters in the area, combined with the closing of the cinema screens inside the Koma Stadium complex, has left only four screens remaining in all of Kabukicho, which was once regarded as a cinema Mecca. Read more

Gasp! Zap!! Ah!!! AED-equipped sex shop in Osaka keeps geezers’ hearts ticking

Japan’s fuzoku sex businesses have not only been forced to confront the worst recession in decades; they must also contend with flaccid demand due the aging of society.

But at last, a glimmer of good news. Shukan Jitsuwa (March 18) reports that a shop in Osaka’s Tennoji district has found a way to put a completely new spin on the term “safe sex.” To enable sensual seniors to partake in sleaze with less risk of dying in the saddle so to speak, hotetoru “Pearl Diamond” installed an emergency defibrillator unit (AED) on its premises earlier this year.

A hotetoru, for the uninitiated, is an abbreviation of hotel toruko, typically an unlicensed sex shop that arranges sudsy, soapland-style trysts between gals and their johns on the premises of hotels.

“All of our staff have been instructed in the basics of AED operation,” the shop’s manager boasts. “Fortunately up to now we’ve never had to use it, but it’s there just in case. Our girls like having it too — I suppose it helps take a load off their minds.” Read more

Females forced to work off debts on hands and knees

In September 2008, a 23-year-old employee of a cabaret club (kyabakura) approached real estate operator Yu Shimojo, 41, for a loan, saying she needed money to care for her sick parents. Shimojo said he would lend her 850,000 yen on the condition that she work it off in a Yoshiwara soapland.

With interest added, reports Nikkan Gendai (Feb. 10), the woman agreed to pay back Shimojo 1,030,000 yen. The shop where she toiled was one of the more reasonable places in Yoshiwara, charging customers a comparatively cheap 20,000 yen for 70 minutes of sudsy recreation. Read more

Tokyo’s dirty old men need love too

About five or six years ago, a male pensioner, while seated in a hospital waiting room to see the doctor, was informed by a fellow retired patient about a third-tier, cheapo erotic bathhouse in Tokyo’s Yoshiwara district where the cost of admission ran only 11,000 yen. He promptly began patronizing it, and never fails to pay a visit every other month after his pension payment arrives at his bank.

Now, reports the writer of the series “Heisei soap-gai onna to kane sugoi hanashi” (Fantastic tales of women and money at Heisei-era soaplands) in Nikkan Gendai (Dec. 21), it’s become quite common for elderly men to drop into Yoshiwara for some tender, loving care. Read more

Tallying the bottom line for Tokyo women in the sex trade

The “elite” of Japan’s sex industry used to be the gals who slither in suds at deluxe soaplands.

During better times, says 27-year-old Azusa, a “foam princess” could earn as much as 500,000 yen a day. But the big-spend bubble has been pricked, and these days pickings are slim.

“We work on a commission basis, so no customers means no money,” she tells Shukan Jitsuwa (Dec. 17). “The shop guarantees 30,000 yen per diem for us to show up. But when business is slow the number of girls on duty are cut. So even if we want to work we can’t. Anyway, there’s no demand.”

To win back clients, some soaps have begun offering an increasingly rough-and-tumble range of services heretofore unavailable. These would include soku-shaku and soku-beddo (on-the-spot oral sex and intercourse as soon as the patron enters the room); the usual matto play atop an air mattress; and bareback rides. Read more

Police crackdown on ‘girl’s bars’ no deterrent to erotic offerings

In addition to crackdowns on soaplands and orgy parties that Weekly Playboy routinely features in its pages, the magazine is now finding that ‘girl’s bars,’ which are clubs staffed by ladies serving from behind a counter, are also becoming a target of the police. Yet a low profile is not an option as many are offering excessively provocative services — nearly a requirement in today’s tough economic climate.

Yui, a 19-year-old college student, tells the tabloid about a group of cops that showed up while she was working. “It happened so fast, and the bar was asked to stop operating. Apparently the problem was that the girls were sitting next to the customers. I was shocked because I thought this place was clean. But I quickly moved over to another girl’s bar,” she giggles.

A 10-year veteran writer for the “pink” trade offers: “The girl’s bar is registered as an after hours eating-and-drinking place, much like an izakaya. Because of this, they are not allowed to offer individual hospitality to customers. The only such place for that service is a kyabakura (hostess club), which is registered as an eating-and-drinking establishment that includes socializing.” Read more

No kitties admitted to the cat house

Ancient Shinto beliefs proscribe women from entering the straw dohyo sumo ring. But what about entering a whorehouse?

But wait; why would a respectable woman want to go to a whorehouse in the first place?

Because she’s a feisty female fuzoku writer, Nikkan Gendai (Oct. 22) reports, in the latest installment of a series titled “Fuzokukai no Yami” (the dark side of the sex business).

The sex industry is always open to new ideas and suggestions. For instance, once the manager of a shop asked a reporter, “Have you got any ideas we could try out?” Read more

Hot seat: DPJ representative Mieko Tanaka former fuzoku writer

Among the 119,021 voters casting ballots for Democratic Party of Japan representative Mieko Tanaka in Ishikawa Prefecture Constituency No. 2. during last month’s lower house election few probably knew that the candidate once dressed in costumes while interviewing ladies employed in the sex trade, reports Friday (Sep. 18).

Tanaka, 33, hailing from the city of Kanazawa, was one of “Ozawa’s girls,” which referred to a group of attractive female candidates dispatched to minor constituencies under the guidance of DPJ politician Ichiro Ozawa. She fell a mere 4,000 votes short of former Prime Minister Yoshihiro Mori during her party’s August 30 pummeling of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan — the DPJ took 308 seats, sixty-seven more than that required for a majority. Yet she wound up qualifying for a house seat through the proportional representation (PR) system.

Friday explains, however, that it has details of her past that are sure to make Ozawa blush. Read more

Chilling out with stories of spooky sex

Mayumi, age 28, is currently employed at a Tokyo sex shop. Several years ago, however, she starred in adult videos.

She was in the process of shooting an outdoor night scene on an isolated section of the seacoast in Kanagawa Prefecture. The scene called for her to slip off her step-ins, pull up her skirt and have her posterior penetrated as she bent over the railing atop a cliff overlooking the ocean.

The cameras were rolling away and male lead was banging her from behind when Mayumi happened to glance down on the rocks about 10 meters below.

“Looking down, I noticed something white,” she tells Shukan Taishu (Sep. 7) in a hushed whisper. “It was a girl dressed in white.” Read more

Desperate deri heru dames say sayonara to safe sex

The term sutemi, written with characters meaning “discard the body,” is used to describe an act of desperation or being driven to one’s last resort.

In the view of Weekly Playboy (Aug. 10), this aptly describes what’s currently going on in the sex trade.

“Around this time last year I used to get four or five calls a day,” complains Natsumi, age 30, who works for an out-call sex service, referred to as deri heru within the trade’s parlance, in Uguisudani, in Tokyo’s Taito Ward. “There were some days last month in which I put in nine-hour days without getting one single customer.”

It seems that girls in other businesses, like cabaret club hostesses (kyabakura) and soapland masseuses — as well as laid-off office ladies — have been flocking to work at deri heru clubs in increasing numbers, creating a glut of supply at a time of shrinking demand. Read more

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