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 ...
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 ...
The tabloid magazine Weekly Bunshun has published an interview with someone they give the alias Yuna Ishihara, who is apparently a 24-year-old student at Tokyo College of Music.
But she also appears in adult video and works at a soapland in Yoshiwara, Tokyo's long-established red-light district in the east of the city.
But due to the pandemic, her income of ¥900,000 (around $9,000) a month has massively decreased, leading her to take up papakatsu.
As reported before, this is a euphemism for compensated dating with older men (sugar daddies). The principle is hardly new but the term has ...
It's from late December 2013 but we just stumbled upon this stimulating article on The Tokyo Files about Yoshiwara.
As regular readers will know, Yoshiwara was the licensed pleasure quarter in historical Tokyo (Edo). Today it doesn't correspond to an official address (funny that!) but you can find it at Senzoku 4-chome in Taito-ku, which is in the east of the city and very far from the expensive brand stores or third-wave coffee shops of Shinjuku, Shibuya and Omotesando.
Its location from 1675 was moated with two entry points: the Japanese love to control everything, even ...
The gentrification and renaissance of Yoshiwara, the former licensed red-light district (and today, an unlicensed red-light district), continues.
After a designer souvenir shop we saw earlier in the year now comes a new book shop, Kasutori Shobo. The store opened on September 3rd in the heart of Yoshiwara, selling books reprinting valuable resources and history about Yoshiwara and the adult side to the Showa era.
Alongside other publishers' titles, the shop also publishes its own books. The owner, Goh Watanabe, raised money via a crowdfunding service to do this, achieving his target in ...
Yoshiwara was the main red-light district (yukaku) in Edo, the old name for Tokyo. Its legacy continues to resonate today: the area remains full of soaplands and prostitutes, and other parts of the east of the city, such as Ueno, Nippori and Akihabara, are also centers of cheap sex.
That being said, Yoshiwara is gentrifying to a certain extent -- and here's an interesting example, first reported on Spoon Tamago.
But for designer Yayoi Okano, Yoshiwara was more than just a neighborhood known for its sex trade. It was home.
Okano grew up in Yoshiwara where, despite its ...
Forget Toyota and Sony, the real beneficiaries of Abenomics and the boost to the economy Japan is receiving (at least in spirit) is Yoshiwara, the old red light district near the Tokyo Sky Tree and still active centuries after it first became a licensed sex area.
Of course, these days prostitution is officially outlawed (thanks to the US occupation for that) but the true Yoshiwara experience can still be enjoyed in the soaplands, where you get a bubbly rub-down followed by other kinds of services.
The increase in tourists to the nearby Sky Tree is having a knock-on effect on the ...
The Japanese have always been kinky.
You may know that there are ancient Japanese dildos, historical erotic prints, fart war scrolls, and even bamboo sex dolls from long ago.
But did you know there was also a sex shop in old Tokyo? Yotsumeya was in the Ryogoku area of Edo (the old name for Tokyo), a bustling center and not too far from the famous red light district, Yoshiwara. It first opened in 1626, making it the oldest adult goods shop in Japan, though sadly it closed in the Meiji period (late nineteenth century) when Japan was trying to "modernize" (and did such foolish things ...
