Yokohama condo residents evict transsexual brothel

A Yokohama court has ordered a transsexual parlor to leave a residential complex in the city after a group of residents got together to sue it on grounds of violating the terms of usage.

Locals were annoyed about the large numbers of employees and customers coming and going in the elevator.

Police were unable to do anything about Hanatsuki Yokohama because it was a classed as a gay service.

In Japan, paying for penetrative sex is illegal, so prostitution services get around this by officially not offering “full service”, though this is frequently a mere camouflage maintained to stay within the letter of the law.

However, the the Entertainment Establishments Control Law, which administers the sex trade and its manifold spin-offs, does not cover male-to-male encounters.

There is some confusion here about labels. News reports are saying slightly different things in terms of whether this was a newhalf (transsexual) or a josou (cross-dresser) sex service, which is a significant difference, though we think that a full newhalf fuzoku (brothel) is still covered by the legal loophole since the woman are still “men” in the eyes of the law. (Revealingly, one article we read said the employees were “men dressed as women” but also then used the word “newhalf”, which is not only ignorant, it is also incredible considering how hyper-sensitive the western media has been forced to become by rights groups about using proper language. Effectively the mainstream media in Japan is happy to deny that trans people are the gender they want to be.)

It is common for transsexual sex services to exist more or less in open sight, and it is also quite typical for them to operate out of apartments in condos. This case, though, may set a precedent for police cracking down on trans sex services.

Rates at Hanatsuki start at ¥10,000 for a 40-minute session with Mitsuki, Chisato, Eri, or one other ladies on the books.

Moving into the condo in 2012, the unit was registered as the home of a family but clearly that was not the case. There doesn’t seem to be an indication of prejudice here against the service precisely because of sexuality, but residents were upset by the number of male staff bringing customers to the apartment and the smell of perfume lingering in the elevator.

Hanatsuki has been ordered to vacate the premises by May.