The photographer Beniko has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a follow-up photo book to her 2023 publication about Japan's disappearing old red-light districts (yukaku, akasen).
Beniko is herself a former sex worker at a soapland in Yoshiwara, the famous red-light district in east Tokyo that was a booming licensed pleasure quarter during the Edo period. A single mother in her early fifties, she taught herself to use a camera from the age of 48.
She has given guided tours of Yoshiwara and taken portraits of porn stars, strippers, and Yoshiwara soaplands.
Her photography project has ...
The tabloid Weekly Friday has reported on two scammers who are terrorizing unsuspecting men they pick up through dating and matchmaking apps.
The first is dubbed Glans Dash Yuri.
Yuri apparently agrees to meet guys on an app for compensated dating. She sets the fee as ¥20,000 and they meet somewhere like outside a fast food restaurant near Seibu Shinjuku Station, which is a short walk to the love hotels in Okubo-Kabukicho.
They go to a really basic love hotel with a small room, bed, and shower (these may not even be in a love hotel but just a "rental room" in a multi-tenant building). ...
With the current boom in international tourists coming to Japan, many popular sightseeing destinations are uncomfortably crowded.
But it's not just the usual suspects that tourists are apparently keen to see.
In Tokyo, along with Ginza, Shibuya, Asakusa, and the like, visitors are also reportedly fans of going to Okubo Park, on the edge of Kabukicho, Shinjuku.
As we have written about several times, this park has become the center of a moral panic about young women publicly offering themselves for sex.
Despite the huge size of the sex industry here, streetwalkers are a relatively rare ...
The police crackdown continues on the phenomenon known as Toyoko kids, referring to the young delinquents gathering in the main plaza in Kabukicho at night.
Delinquency in Shinjuku's Kabukicho is absolutely nothing new but the current issue was sparked, in part, by the pandemic and is spatially different now, with young people gathering in one main location and the optics at nighttime contrasting with the "clean" Kabukicho.
The crackdown is linked to the attempts to gentrify Kabukicho and turn it into a tourist-friendly destination, even at night, which is ongoing for several years, and the ...
Prostitution is big business in Japan, as any wander down the back alleys of Kabukicho or around Okubo Park should quickly attest.
The former is filled with blowjob parlors and "dispatch" shops, while the latter has become a notorious hotbed of streetwalkers (actually, street standers -- since they are all just lingering and waiting for clients to come along).
We would like to think it's the sex workers themselves who are making all the yen but there are almost always middlemen (perhaps with the exception of the women at Okubo Park, which is why they are more vulnerable).
As reported ...
A US Marine corporal has been arrested for filming a female sex worker in Naha, Okinawa.
The 22-year-old was arrested at the scene on May 4 for breaching a little-known law against filming sexual acts.
The Marine is attached to Camp Kinser (Machinato Service Area) in Urasoe on the main island of Okinawa. He told police, "I didn't know it was illegal [to film]." And if we're honest, that's fair enough. While a customer likely knows it's almost always against the brothel's rules and liable to land you in trouble, it might surprise many that you can actually face arrest for filming your ...
The stories about the victims of male hosts' exploitation seem to become more sensational week by week.
Last week, we wrote about the schoolgirl who was allowed to build up a huge bill at a host club and had to prostitute herself to pay off her debt.
Now comes a story in which this latest moral panic seems to dovetail with another recent trend: the tales of Japanese women going abroad to earn money as sex workers and take advantage of the weak yen.
This has become so common that a crackdown has started in the United States.
China, Hong Kong, and Macau remain popular destinations, however ...
The media-driven moral panic over visible prostitution in Okubo Park has sparked a crackdown on host clubs, since at least some of the young woman engaged in selling their body in the area near Kabukicho, Tokyo, are doing it to pay their debts at host clubs.
There is a similar moral panic over the youngsters who gather at Toyoko, though young people up to no good in Kabukicho is totally in keeping with the history of the area -- it just jars with the attempts by the Shinjuku government and land developers to gentrify the district. The so-called Toyoko kids at Toyoko are rumored to be ...
Held at an undisclosed venue in Ginza on April 27 from 2:30 p.m., GBGW features a lineup of dozens of top Japanese sex workers as well as several leading Fantia adult content creators.
Events include: a "breasts contest" with the lovely ladies, competing to see who has the best tits in the "oppai Olympics"; a game of "human musical chairs"; a talk with the ladies; and a sex quiz.
The emcees include two pairs of manzai comedians, the porn star and wrestler Chanyota, and two top sex workers.
Attendees also receive discounts from all the participating brothels and sex services that they ...
With the yen cheap, local wages stagnant, and the media full of stories of young Japanese people on working holiday visas in Australia earning lots of money, is it any wonder that some people thinking going abroad is a quick and easy way to make a fortune?
And that includes sex workers.
As we have previously reported, Hong Kong has cracked down on Japanese porn stars traveling to the country to work as prostitutes, where they receive higher fees and are marketed as a AV celebrities.
In the United States, border officials will stop young women if they appear to be entering the country for ...
