Changing Times for Japanese Sex Workers

[thinkaboutit24]

Japan to tighten its rules on foreign entertainers


2006/3/14
TOKYO, Reuters



Japan will prohibit companies with links to organized crime from bringing foreign singers and dancers into the country from later this year, in an attempt to crack down on human trafficking.
Tokyo was long known for handing out "entertainer" visas relatively liberally, a practice that activists said left women vulnerable to abuse such as being pressured into prostitution, but criteria for issuing the visas were tightened last year.

A Justice Ministry official said Monday that regulations will be tightened still further from June 1 to prevent organized crime organizations or anybody who has been a crime syndicate member in the past five years from sponsoring foreign entertainers.

The companies will also have to promise to pay the entertainers -- thousands of whom are from the Philippines, with many also coming from Thailand -- more than 200,000 yen (US$1,680) a month.

"There are many groups out there that abuse these women, so we wanted to tighten rules on this," the official said.

"By requiring each company to pay the women properly, we hope this will also help keep them from being forced into prostitution."



http://www.chinapost.com.tw/asiapacific/detail.asp?ID=78600&GRP=C

 

[partly cloudy]

'Gothic Lolitas' massage their way into geeks' hearts

Japanese are well known for their love of dressing up, a custom that has given rise to the current popularity of "costume play," which involves young women engaging in role playing while wearing a variety of outlandish garb. One of the more popular costumes is that of French maids. The maid uniform fad seems to have first caught on at upscale, European-style massageplanetes where customers can enjoy a cuppa served by a gal in black dress, sequined apron and little embroidered taira.

But, as Japanese are wont to do with anything that involves young women and a fad, it was not long at all before someone got the idea of adopting the uniforms to massage parlors, and since February 2005, the numbers of such establishments began to soar.

Some of these spots, Shukan Taishu (3/20) reports, are so popular that customers stand in line outside the doors. And others can boast customers so enthusiastic, they visit their favorite shop five days a week.

Wait a second! Did you say five days a week? Well, yes. We are talking about places that only charge 1,000 or 2,000 yen for short visits, with no hanky-panky involved. Go and figure.

At least 10 of the 18 shops introduced in the article are situated in Tokyo's electronics wholesale district Akihabara. Which, in addition to being a center of Japan's IT industry, is also its undisputed mecca of geekdom.

And what's Shukan Taishu's explanation for that?

"Well, Akihabara has got lots of computer users, and in addition to eye fatigue, many complain of stiff necks, sore shoulders and aching backs," explains the operator of a store in Tokyo's famous electronics wholesale district. "Being massaged by a girl in a maid uniform gives them a lift --- I suppose it has a sort of suggestive effect. To work the kinks out of their muscles, a massage won't be effective unless you get them to relax first. The maid costume seems to be the most suitable for achieving this."

Akihabara's "Cutie Relax," closest of all the shops to JR Akihabara Station, may be just the thing for a nerdy programmer looking to get away from his keyboard for some relaxation with a cutie. Open from noon to 10:00 p.m., this establishment, which opened last December, may be a little bit hard to locate, but Shukan Taishu's article provides the telephone numbers for all the establishments mentioned, and advises phoning, since "Cutie Relax" will dispatch a maid to meet the customer at the point he designates.

Other spots specialize in reflexology, i.e., foot massage. Akihabara's "M@i Foot," one of the first of its kind to open, has a stable of over 20 maids, with an average age of 22. In addition to their ministering to the customer's hands and feet, visitors can sit at the shop's oxygen bar and enjoy a few minutes inhaling their choice of 10 favorite fragrances.

Meanwhile "Holy-Land," which opened two months ago in Osaka's "Minami" district, features "angels" who dress up in the garb of so-called "Gothic Lolitas." In addition to foot massages, it also provides manicures.

Although some of these shops feature private rooms with TVs and mini-refrigerators, no mention herein is made of sex services. In fact, at least some of the shops readily admit female customers, and some even welcome couples visiting together.

Shukan Taishu's message, this time at least, seems to be, "Come on, guys, relax and enjoy it. There's more to life than getting laid, y'know!" (By Masuo Kamiyama, People's Pick contributor.)

March 11, 2006

 

[Revans]

In medieval Japan, sexual entertainers and their customers enjoyed great freedoms until a growing orthodoxy stifled their trade, Janet Goodwin tells a UCLA audience.


An early Heian period painting shows three women in a boat rowing alongside a larger boat carrying male passengers, some dressed richly and some ascetically—aristocrats and monks. The kimono-clad women were asobi, or sexual entertainers, singing their siren song to lure the aristocrats to some temporary pleasure shack.

With the monks in the rear, explained an independent scholar, Janet Goodwin, Jan. 9 at UCLA, the large boat was probably on its return from some chartered pilgrimage to a sacred site. The asobi knew well the sea lanes for pilgrims who were ready to unburden themselves of their journey’s abstinence. Goodwin, who spoke at a colloquium sponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies, observed that weaker pilgrims might have looked for the asobi even on the way to sacred sites.

How did this libertine activity stand, so laden with irony? Goodwin said that in fact it did not, that once liberal perceptions towards sexuality would give way to a conservative sexual orthodoxy in both the Heian (794–1185) and the Kamakura periods (1185–1333).

Entertainments provided by the asobi were not exclusively sexual. The women's high-priced services included folk songs, sometimes lyrically composed of Buddhist sutras, and traditional dances, Goodwin said.

Goodwin drew on such sources as courtier and courtesan diaries, records of judicial cases involving the asobi, and divorce settlements to argue that the Japanese embraced a very liberal attitude towards sex in the early Heian period. Men were polygamous, women serially monogamous, widows sexually active, and divorce common. Prostitution was merely risqué, not shameful, according to Goodwin.

But as time went on, Goodwin said, people began to look on the asobi with distrusting eyes. Celibate monks, their chastity perhaps threatened, began to decry the women as a wicked bunch out to distract and corrupt Buddhist men.

One story Goodwin cited was that of a Buddhist monk who recounted seeing a beautiful, naked woman when a sudden stir of wind lifted the wispy curtain that hid her from the street. The sight inspired such burning lust in the monk that he prayed fervently to be reincarnated as an Oni, or devil, that would possess the right to rape the maiden.

Castle Topplers
Beyond temptations and conflicts, social considerations began to prompt change, Goodwin argued. With the emergence of the shogunate during the Heian period, greater emphasis was placed on a strict patrilinear system. Penalties for adultery grew more strict, in part to prevent feuds among legitimate as well as illegitimate offspring.

Women who seduced high-level aristocrats came to be known as keisei, or "castle topplers," after one lady was sent by one lord specifically to enslave a rival through seduction, finally coaxing him into giving up his holdings.

Meanwhile, the asobi were gaining a reputation as a public nuisance because of their itinerancy. Although some settled in “pleasure districts," they were largely nomadic, drifting about in search of work. "They live in animal-hair tents and drift from place to place in pursuit of food and water, just like the northern barbarians," wrote a twelfth-century observer, شe Masafusa, in a sharp departure from the tone he had adopted in an earlier description of the asobi. ("Their voices halt the clouds floating through the valleys, and their tones drift with the wind blowing over the water. Passers-by cannot help but forget their families," شe had written.)

Gradually, and as the asobi came under harsh scrutiny from a ministry set up to regulate prostitution, the stigma attached to sexual entertainment prevented many aristocrats from indulging in it.

The sexual orthodoxy that reigned in the asobi had broader consequences for the liberties of Japanese women, Goodwin said. Divorce was increasingly frowned upon, and widows were expected to remain unattached and to pray for their dead husbands, perhaps entering a nunnery. Attitudes changed not merely towards physical acts, Goodwin suggested, but towards gender roles, affecting especially the lives of women.



Date Posted: 1/13/2006

http://international.ucla.edu/asia/article.asp?parentid=37093