An interview with a soapland worker
September 12, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
Following its recent interview with pink film softcore porn star Chisa Hasegawa, the awesome Substack blog-newsletter Tokyo Calling has put out another cracker -- and we are very jealous. We don't know how Gianni Simone pulled it off but he managed to land an interview with a genuine soapland worker, and it's a sensitive and enlightening read.
Accompanied by photos by Eric Rechsteiner, the intrepid Simone pays a visit to one of the many soaplands (a kind of bathhouse-style brothel) in Senzoku, the Tokyo area formerly known as Yoshiwara -- the city's most popular and renowned red-light ...
Elections bring out the eccentrics, with plenty of novelty candidates reliably popping up to keep us amused. Past examples include the wannabe politician who wore government-supplied face masks as a bra or the regular appearances of Teruki Goto -- including once nude on his campaign poster.
With the recent passing of the controversial new law regulating the porn industry, how are candidates responding to the current situation?
We found two intriguing examples among candidates for the upcoming Upper House election.
Riyo Takahashi, the 48-year-old founder of the Japanese video hosting site ...
Tokyo District Court dismisses lawsuit over pandemic relief for sex workers
July 1, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
After the government and media demonized mizu-shobai (host and hostess clubs, and similar businesses) as Covid superspreaders, the industry reacted by working with officials to spread information about how to avoid affection.
Others, though, fought back. A member of the sex industry sued the government for its refusal to provide handouts to adult businesses, despite giving such funds to private citizens and small businesses in "respectable" industries. As we wrote when legal proceedings began at Tokyo District Court in autumn 2020, the woman who filed the suit argued this was in violation of ...
Single mom brainwashed by Tokyo couple into prostitution
June 30, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
A Japanese married couple has pleaded guilty to forcing a 25-year-old single mom into prostitution.
The single mother was staying with them. As payment for laundry and other costs, they made her work as a prostitute, according to media reports of the trial at Tokyo District Court, which began in May.
There were 334 acts of alleged prostitution in six months. The mother was apparently brainwashed by the couple and sent out into the local area to pick up clients.
Prosecutors are seeking a custodial sentence of 2.5 years for the couple.
The single mother was working as a hostess and giving ...
Department store in Japan uses fake “adult information booth” to promote event
June 18, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
Parco, a leading department store chain in Japan, has issued an apology after it used a "sex booth" to promote an event.
The installation was decked out in the style of the "free information" kiosks (muryo annaijo) that are found in certain city districts for providing listings, referrals, and recommendations about various forms of sex services (fuzoku), including blowjob parlors, delivery health, and soaplands, and also hostess clubs and girls bars.
Though less common as they were in the days before everyone had access to the internet on their phones, such adult booths are still found in ...
Confessions of a foreign female about compensated dating in Japan
June 6, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
We stumbled upon this confessional post on Amina du Jean's Substack, billed as "a digital temple for positive femininity." The title, "Crazy Sexy Tokyo," is provocative and sounds like another "wacky Japan" story at first, but we were especially intrigued to read the author's insights into compensated dating (enjo kosai).
Writing about her personal experiences of participating in this social "custom" of young women, in which they go on dates with (older) men and receive monetary "compensation" for their troubles, the author is very candid and doesn't resort to the more obvious ...
Police crack down on Akihabara reflexology parlors over prostitution allegations
May 20, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
A few years ago, various shops began to appear in places like Akihabara offering services like hugs, ear-cleaning, "snuggling," massages, and "reflexology." However, like how massage parlors may provide more than just a massage, some of the "cuddle cafe" (soine-ten) establishments merely used these services as fronts for forms of prostitution. A police crackdown ensued and we actually thought there were very few, if any, left.
It seems that such places are still around and up to their old tricks, operating under the guise of rifure-ten (reflexology shops).
A rifure-ten chain, Rapunzel ...
Syphilis continues alarming spread in Japan in first quarter of 2022
April 25, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
The growing problem of syphilis in Japan is not new: we've been writing about it for years now. But it simples that it won't get better any time soon. Just when you think cases can't rise anymore or that the coronavirus pandemic would at least slow its relentless spread, along comes the latest batch of statistics to prove you wrong.
We are only a quarter of the way through the year but number of cases of syphilis in Japan is already up yet again, reports the Mainichi.
Compared to the same period last year -- whose overall figure reached a record high -- the number of syphilis cases has ...
Prostitute arrested for tricking older customer out of small fortune
March 10, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
Be careful what that young lady offers you: it probably is too good to be true.
When the fiftysomething man from Ibaraki met the 28-year-old Chiharu Yamaguchi through a fuzoku (brothel) service three years ago, he thought all his Christmases had come at once. They started exchanging messages via LINE and he came to believe they were a couple.
She promised she would be with him till death. Thinking she would marry him, the man agreed to her requests for money that she said she needed to pay back her student loan or her mother's operations. She is alleged to have tricked the unnamed man out ...
Tokyo female tax bureau employee punished for soapland side job to pay for host club habit
February 4, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
It's almost time to declare taxes in Japan, so we were particularly amused by this story in the news. Tokyo Taxation Bureau has announced the punishment of a 27-year-old female employee at one of its branches for breaching its rules on civil servants having side jobs.
The nature of the side job probably didn't help.
The unnamed woman was actually working at a soapland as a sex worker. For her troubles, she has been handed down a nine-month suspension, the bureau announced at the end of January.
She was working at soaplands from October 2020 to January 2022 at weekday nights and on days ...