The Japanese tabloid Flash has run an extraordinary interview with a former soapland sex worker with an elite education, and today works as an administrative scrivener.
Sumika Hori (保利澄香) was born into an elite family of doctors in Akita Prefecture, in northern Japan.
She endured humiliating experiences during childhood, such as being called fat by her family, and she ran away from her family home. She successfully escaped by enrolling in a high school with a dormitory in Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo, but voluntarily withdrew due to various circumstances, leading to an unstable ...
This week, one of the biggest crime stories related to the sex industry has been the arrest of five people at a high-end brothel in Yoshiwara on suspicion of violating the Anti-Prostitution Act.
The 55-year-old operator, who was among the arrested on June 22 and June 23, is suspected of earning ¥5.5 billion in revenue over approximately eight and a half years. Investigators think Louvre had as many as 36 woman on its books. It has been in business since 1983 and would serve around 20 customers a day, who paid ¥80,000 for a two-hour session. Customers would pay about the official fee of ...
We recently reported about the large-scale closure of soaplands around Japan following the shuttering of a major chain, possibly to avoid a police crackdown in the wake of the investigation into a major scouting operation that has had far-reaching consequences for the Japanese adult entertainment industry.
And with the closures, it brings to mind a peculiar legal situation for soaplands in Tokyo: according to the regulations governing sex services, you are not allowed to open an establishment in the city, with the exception of a few blocks near Yoshiwara, the old red-light district of Tokyo. ...
It's one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories. And it's got a bit of everything. Bribery. Expensive dinners. An elite educational institution. Sex. Lawsuits. Even CBD.
A University of Tokyo professor has been arrested for accepting over ¥1.8 million in bribes in exchange for research favors. Leading dermatologist Shin'ichi Sato (pictured below) also allegedly received complimentary visits to high-end hostess clubs and soapland brothels. The 30 visits to clubs and soaplands reportedly brought the total amount of his bribe to ¥3.8 million.
The 62-year-old is a professor at the ...
Miporin (Miporin-sama) is known as one of most high-profile dominatrixes in Tokyo. She works for the 11 Channel soapland in Yoshiwara (and claims to be the only latex fetish specialist dom working in that famous district) and the BDSM members' club Dominant Tokyo. Heavily tattooed, the half-Chinese, half-Filipino mistress is also known for her cheerful personality that completely contrasts with the aggressive image of a dominatrix.
The self-professed "rubber queen" gave an interview to Spa! last month and we have translated some of the highlights below.
How did she get her first ...
The new Taiga drama Unbound has started on public broadcaster NHK. The period drama is an institution on Japanese TV, running for a whole year and always attracting a lot of attention.
It typically broadcasts in the early evening and is pretty tame in terms of content (don't expect blood in the fight scenes, for instance).
As such, viewers were surprised to see nudity in the very first episode last Sunday. Japanese TV drama shows on the established linear channels generally features no nudity, even for late-night shows, though there are sometimes bizarrely non-nude sex scenes.
The nude ...
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 ...
