Japanese Authority's Clean up Hits Sexual Cabaret Club

Ryann Connell
One of the most daring adult clubs in Osaka's Minami entertainment district has been shut down in what many say is the first strike in a campaign to clean up the area, according to Shukan Jitsuwa.

Six of the hostesses and a male customer of the "sexual cabaret club" Impulse were arrested last month for indecent exposure after the workers allegedly labored while entirely nude and the patron exposed his genitals.

Those alleged acts aren't the only indecency that appears to have gone on at Impulse.

"As soon as you enter the club, a hostess will give you a hot towel that she has already used to swipe her private parts. You can start fondling the hostesses' breasts as soon as you sit down, but that's nothing. You immediately get a drink, but it's a hostess's urine served on the rocks. They also serve tidbits sprinkled with cuttings of the workers' pubic hair," the employee of an adult entertainment introduction service tells Shukan Jitsuwa. "They also had a service where the ice served in drinks is first inserted into the hostess's private parts. They just kept on getting wilder and wilder and I think they went too far in the end."

Impulse strictly forbid the media from covering it, but word of the club's existence spread quickly and it was among the most popular establishments in Minami. Some say the arrests at Impulse signal the start of a clean-up of the entertainment district.

"That place was warned plenty of times in the past for going too far," a writer on the sex industry says. "I knew there'd eventually be arrests there some day."

Others defend Impulse, though.

"Sure, it stretched the limits, but it never really went beyond them. It didn't provide any sexual services that resulted in ejaculation and if there was any nudity going on, it was never anything more than a quick flash," the operator of a call girl service says. "Even its most raunchy stuff wasn't that serious. I think the arrests have been made to send a message to others."

Reporters covering the Osaka Prefectural Police beat certainly think so.

"Some people are saying the tough line cops are taking on adult businesses in Minami will only go on until the end of this year. But I think they're wrong. I think this crackdown is going to keep on going for ages," a hack covering the Osaka police beat tells Shukan Jitsuwa. "And the reason why I feel that is the cops working on Minami now are the same ones who carried out the massive clean-up a couple of years ago of the Kabukicho district in Tokyo."

Sphere: Related Content

Japan's Raunchiest Entertainment Industry Staggering?

Japan's biggest, brashest, raunchiest entertainment district -- suffered a slow, boring entrance to 2008, with one notable exception: love hotels, Shukan Shincho says.

"It's really sad," a Kabukicho restaurant employee tells Shukan Shincho. "There wasn't a soul around on New Year's Day. About the only places in Kabukicho that attracted anyone over the New Year holidays were game centers and pachinko parlors."

Rumors have recently sprung up that Japan's once-spurting "ejaculation industry" is well and truly on the wane.

"Ever since (Shintaro) Ishihara became governor of Tokyo, policing of Kabukicho has become really tight. The number of storefront sex business there has dropped dramatically and now there are only loads of stores selling adult DVDs or booths offering advice on sex services in their place," the restaurant worker says. "The whole atmosphere of the district has changed and virtually no-one comes here for sex anymore."

Once a Kabukicho staple, soapland brothels in particular are feeling washed up.

"A whole series of famous ramen noodle restaurants have opened up in one alley near all the soaplands," a Kabukicho insider tells the weekly. "People line up to get into the restaurants, which makes it a bit too embarrassing for guys to have to walk past them all to go into the brothels."

Still, not every business in Kabukicho is hurting. In fact, while not as many people may be paying for Kabukicho's carnal pleasures, that doesn't mean they're not getting them in the district.

"(Love hotels) have gone from being just places where you'd go for sex into becoming havens of pleasure. Competition among the hotels is absolutely fierce and consumers get the benefit. That's not just in things like reasonable rates and longer sessions, but services like room service menus with over 100 items and orders accepted 24 hours a day, surround-sound audio systems in the rooms, online karaoke sets and then free provision of toiletries and other items for stays like pajamas. There are even some love hotels with meals prepared by famous chefs," the Kabukicho insider tells Shukan Shincho.

"Some Kabukicho love hotels have started putting up sandwich boards in front of their establishments to advertise the services they're providing. Some couples even spent the entire New Year period in Kabukicho love hotels."

Sphere: Related Content