Booth babe at Tokyo Auto Salon complains about visitors photographing her body
A major part of the appeal of events like the Tokyo Game Show and various car events is getting to see the slinkily dressed booth babes, known collectively as “companions” in Japanese. They stand at the promotional area, handing out flyers or otherwise attracting attention to the display with their bodies.
Sure, it’s a deeply dated and sexist marketing technique, but it works, and the booth babes have developed their own fandom, with many attendees coming just for them. A small minority of companions even manage to move into gravure modeling, like Kanami Takasaki.
But like with cosplayers at events like Comiket, there are problems inherent to being on display in front of thousands of male attendees with cameras. When does a bit of visitor leering go too far? Or do such women forfeit the right to complain about visitors’ gazes and lenses by agreeing to exhibit themselves at such events?
The issue is once again in the spotlight after Hinano Sena complained about male visitors trying to take photos of her panties while she was working at Tokyo Auto Salon, which was held from January 9 to January 11 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, just outside Tokyo.
The 27-year-old Sena works as a model and race queen (grid girl), and also appeared at the Auto Salon in black hot pants and matching knee-length boots that emphasized her thighs, standing in front of a custom car and allowing visitors to take photos of her.
On January 10, she posted on X (Twitter), accusing visitors of deliberately targeting her lower body. “Only my lower body was photographed. It makes me very uncomfortable. Please stop.” As evidence, she attached a photo of what appeared to be a male visitor zooming in on Sena’s thighs with a handheld camera.
This sparked both sympathy and an inevitable backlash. One user of the platform asked: “Even though you hate being photographed and have a job that requires you to expose uncomfortable body parts, why are you expressing your discomfort?”
Sena replied to her critics on January 11: “It’s fine to take shots of me from behind. Please don’t take photos of parts of the body, as this is prohibited by the regulations.”
When asked if this was a rule explicitly given to visitors at the annual event, she replied that there was a notice.
Tokyo Auto Salon does indeed have a list of what it calls the Rules for Taking, Streaming, and Posting Photos and Videos. Section 8 of the rules prohibits “photography that enlarges or emphasizes any part of the body of exhibitors, performers, other visitors, campaign girls, race ambassadors, organizers, or other event personnel, or photography of any ID or other identifying information.” The offending image Sena posted shows someone engaged in an act that obviously does break this rule.
With so many booth babes’ bodies on display among the vehicles, it is perhaps all too easy for visitors to forget they are not unfeeling objects like the cars they are promoting.
