No-panties shabu-shabu and Japan’s Ministry of Finance bureaucrats

Like most places, older politicians in Japan are no strangers to sex scandals: from gay prostitutes to forcing young sportsmen to kiss them or even putting bondage club visits on the expense books.

And it’s not just the politicos. The bureaucrats are at it too.

In 1998 seven senior civil servants in the Ministry of Finance were arrested and charged with corruption. They had received favors from figures in the finance world, such as trips to a “no-panties shabu shabu” establishment in Tokyo’s Kabukicho.

Japan’s anti-prostitution laws — paying for penetration is officially illegal — means you get a whole wave of inventive sex services and kinky types of sex club.

Similar to the no-pan kissa (“no panties coffee shop”), this is the uniquely Japanese type of fuzoku where patrons enjoy a meal of shabu-shabu served by waitresses wearing no panties. The floor is often mirrored.

From their height of 200 no-pan kissa in Osaka and Tokyo in the 1980’s, they are now a rare thing.

The MOF scandal led to a wave of resignations and even suicides.

We were reminded of this recently because one of the former MOF bureaucrats who had to resign due to bribery, Yoshio Nakajima, was back in the news recently. Nakajima is often named as part of the shabu-shabu scandal but actual his own misdeeds were probably separate. He was dismissed in 1995 but the no-panties scandals emerged in 1997-8.

Of course, this is Japan. Top civil servants never face real consequences for their actions and Nakajima went straight into very well-paying corporate jobs (amanokudari, as it is known).

But he was recently dismissed as president of Sailor Pen Co. by an unanimous board decision for “failing to devote his efforts to work”. Perhaps he was paying visits to certain types of establishment?