Japan's Sex Trade - Peter Constantine

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chipped in to work as hostesses, pouring drinks and fluttering around the hard-working shipbuilders. In 1927, however, disaster struck. The shipyard was abruptly dismantled, its more than 10,000 shocked workers sent home and, for the first time in more than three centuries, the whole area tumbled into severe economic depression.

      The Anori Village, a few miles north of Watakano Island, reverted to fishing and dedicated itself to developing the Anori Bunraku puppet theater, which was to become famous throughout Japan. The Matoya Village, on the mainland near Watakano, devoted itself to oyster fishing, turning its special breed of matoya-kaki (matoya-oyster) into a national delicacy. By 1932 there was only one brothel left, with five weary hashirigane. Toba Bay, a few miles north, still had five brothels and 40 prostitutes; there the railroad had already arrived, bringing with it the first tourists who were quickly followed by pearl merchants responsible for helping the villagers set up the famous Toba pearl farms.

      The prostitutes on Watakano Island were virtually the only ones to survive unscathed. In a 1932 essay, writer and social historian Iwata Junichi comments on the beauty of the island, a place "where it is eternal spring." He writes of the boat trip from Anakawa Station, which in those days took 45 minutes, and bemoans the end of an era. In particular Iwata Junichi describes his emotion at the historically significant sight of the 1930s hashirigane flocking, as their mothers and grandmothers had done long before them, down to the wooden pier to greet the men on the arriving ferry.

      WATAKANO ISLAND—THE 1990s

      The men start arriving on the island in the afternoon and are helped off the boat by the women waiting on the pier in their fashionable and expensive outfits. The island is very small; its coastline is only five miles around, so the men split into groups and hastily walk to their hotels to prepare themselves for the big enkai (meeting-party). Those who do look around are struck by the beauty and tranquility of the natural setting. The men check into the hotels, and the staff closely examines their papers. The uninitiated client is surprised at the absence of a bed in his room. Puzzled, he might ask the maid, who explains sotto voce that protocol on the island dictates that any young lady or ladies he meets will take him to a bijinesu hoteru (business hotel). This way everything stays nice and proper, especially if during the night the police decide to launch an aquatic offensive from Matoya or Sangasho.

      The men spend the afternoon relaxing and strolling about comfortably in their casual yukata robes and their wooden clogs—the big meeting-party is scheduled from six to eight in the evening. Those impatient to meet women immediately go to a "snack," a red-light bar. To the untrained eye the bar-counter just happens to be filled with happy young women, many of them from the Philippines and Thailand, all eager to meet men. Clients point, the women take an immediate liking to them, and they leave arm in arm for a "business" hotel. The smooth tryst costs the customer $100 for 20 minutes, a percentage of which the prostitute pays back to the "snack" that secretly employs her.

      The real action on Watakano Island takes place at the meeting-parties. For a $100 anshin ryō (relief fee), hordes of men get to mingle with hordes of women, and quick "business" appointments are made between drinks. The prostitutes at the party will book themselves for a series of half-hour stints between 8p.m. and 11p.m., and then go for the $350 all-nighter, lasting from 11p.m. to the morning. This system comes in handy, especially during the high-season rush when there are always many more men on the island than women.

      Since the early fifties, the Watakano enterprise has been very nervous about the possibility of being infiltrated and uncovered by the press. In December of 1992, the young Tokyo journalist Mihiro Kuruto, along with photographer Miyajima Shigeki, finally broke through the anti-press barriers and exposed the island in a Marco Polo magazine special. Mihiro Kuruto writes candidly of following a "snack" woman to her "business" hotel where she checks his papers (to make sure he is not a policeman or, worse, a member of the press). He reports his surprise at finding that all room doors are wide open, regardless of whether customers are in session or not, and that as an extra safety measure, an elderly woman shamelessly darts in and out of the rooms.

      The weekend following the article's publication, lines of cars converged on the province of Mie. The furious local Yakuza mob tightened its security net around Watakano, thanking providence that the annoying article had been vague about the exact whereabouts of the tiny island. Fortunately the dangerous expose had appeared during the deepest winter months, when snow, rain, and long office hours kept even the keenest city-dwellers at bay. Only the hardiest of tourists found their way to Matoya, and they were brushed off at the pier with a "Go away, we're booked!"

      Back in Tokyo, Mihiro Kuruto was snubbed and attacked by fellow journalists and panicky patrons of Watakano. Writer and cartoonist Nemoto even attacked Marco Polo magazine and Kuruto in a furious article in SPA magazine within days of the expose. Why did they have to use the island's real name? Three hundred years of hallowed tradition blown away!

      2 • SOAPLANDS

      If a man wishes his body to be professionally washed, steamed, licked, and manipulated to orgasm, and is prepared to pay between $100 and $850, he might turn to a soap lady working in one of Japan's many notorious soaplands. Of all the sex-trade establishments, the soaplands offer the most ingenious and far-reaching array of sexual services for sale in Japan today. They skillfully dodge the Anti-Prostitution Law by operating under the camouflage of body-washing and massaging.

      The soapland "menu" has been a favorite in Japan since the early Kamakura Period, when bathhouses of ill repute offered masseuses in the two categories of oyuna (big hot-water-females) for the senior specialists, and their novices, usually 12-to 15-years old, known as koyuna (small hot-water-females). Jn the decade after World War II this type of bathhouse adopted the more fashionable name Toruko-buro (Turkish bath), offering the man in the street a cheaper, quicker, and often more relaxing alternative to an allout bordello. The big and small hot-water-females were renamed Toruto-jo (Turkish girls).

      In those days poverty was rampant. Times were so rough that even respectable housewives took to the streets as matchi uri no shop (match-selling girls). For a yen they would strike a match, lift up their skirts, and yank down their bloomers. When the match went out, the peeking time was over and bloomers were hoisted. Times being what they were, bathhouses of every persuasion were flooded by waves of destitute women who hoped to end up as masseuses rather than selling matches or working in brothels. In the brothels as baishunfu ("spring-selling girls" or prostitutes), they would be expected to sell "spring" to a minimum of 12 men per shift, and up to a staggering maximum of 60. So many eager masseuses were available that even the reputable Tokyo Onsen (Tokyo Hot Spring) opened up a whole floor of private massage rooms. As the red-light world in those post-war days was filled with desperate amateurs, the services were scanty compared with the ingenious and devious offerings available today.

      Paradoxically, it took a major catastrophe, the Anti-Prostitution Law of 1957, to transform the bathhouse industry of yesteryear into the sophisticated institution it is now. This law shook the red-light districts all over the country to their foundations. Outraged prostitutes and their pimps protested loudly, sent petitions to the government, and even marched through the streets of Tokyo chanting "Auld Lang Syne," but to no avail. The law passed, and some half-million prostitutes ended up on the street. But not for long. Ever adaptable and courageous in the face of disaster, the sex houses reopened, not as brothels but as bona fide massage parlors and Turkish baths.

      Back in 1951 Tokyo Hot Spring had introduced the first Miss Toruko (Miss Turkish), who coyly kneaded away in good clean fun, clicking her tongue and wagging her finger if her victims became too responsive. Miss Toruko was so wildly successful that by the mid-fifties, red-light magnates fleeing the Anti-Prostitution Law opened the first Toruko baths in Tokyo's Asakusa and Shinjuku Districts.

      For the next 30 years the Turkish

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