Читать книгу Japan's Sex Trade - Peter Constantine - Страница 8

1 • WOMEN WITH RED LAMPS

When the Anti-Prostitution Law descended on Japan in 1957, some of the lower red-light echelons with firm roots in the slums and shanty towns of large cities refused to budge. At first, mass hysteria broke out as retired prostitutes, pimps, and small-time mobsters realized that the government meant business about closing down their mini-brothels and the red-light bars into which they had sunk their life's savings. They protested, picketed, and committed little acts of terrorism, but when it became clear that the Draconian law was here to stay, they put their heads together and decided that they would close down their houses of ill repute and immediately re-open them as something else. The brothel owners rushed down to their local police stations, and as their houses were struck off the register one by one, "restaurants" sprang up in their stead. Food, however, was remarkably absent from their menus.

There is an area of Yokohama, in one of the rougher neighborhoods near the port, that has remained to this day among Japan's most blatant brothel quarters. As one walks from the Isezaki District up towards the railroad tracks beyond the Ōka River that runs down into the harbor, bright posters set up by the local police warn "Beware of AIDS!" and "Beware of Violent Criminals!" and, in what looks like a desperate appeal to the neighborhood, "Stop Foreign Prostitutes!" In the dead of night soft Philippine and Thai voices call out from dim street corners, "Choi no ma?" (Wanna quickie?) as dump trucks and tired cabs cruise slowly past. Just across the river in Koganechō, a two-block mini-district that stretches under the elevated railroad tracks, 180 small brothels that defied the law back in 1956 have remained open. The dilapidated two-floor shanties of wood and corrugated iron, made to measure under the tracks along the 500-odd yards of Koganechō, rattle when the train passes overhead. The girls stand waiting in the doorways. A 15-minute session costs between $90 and $100.

In the early fifties, Koganechō and the two blocks of neighboring Shiroganechō were one of the newer unlicensed prostitution areas that had sprung up in the desperate years after World War II. The elevated tracks had been built in 1931 for the Shonan Electric Railroad, and by the following year 990 people were living under them. During the allied bombing raids in 1945, Koganechō's railroad bridge became a death-trap for thousands when everything under and around it went up in flames. In the next few years dumpy bars and grungy noodle shops appeared, and along with them the ¥200 prostitutes.

The early Koganechō brothels had a set layout. A seedy bar on the street side with the owner and his family living in the back room, and on the second floor, right under the tracks, the two or three small rooms in which the prostitutes worked. The owners did well for themselves, especially after the Anti-Prostitution Law was passed, and soon the bars and noodle shops were being shut down to make more rooms that could be rented at a boisterous profit to new prostitutes. But even more rental rooms were needed, and by the late sixties and throughout the seventies the owners and their families started moving to better neighborhoods so they could subdivide whole ground floor areas into small and expensive cubicles. By 1980, the official resident count of Koganechō had dropped to 95 people.

By the late eighties, Taiwanese and Philippine prostitutes started appearing in the brothels and on the street corners, followed in the early nineties by a wave of Thai girls. With them came a new pimping-husband phenomenon, in which the prostitute would marry—paying her husband an average of $500 a month—so that she could legally remain in Japan. The girls soon realized that being a foreigner in Koganechō was expensive; by 1993, the room rates had rocketed to as much as $1,000 a month. The landlords, however, possibly in compliance with the police posters, rented out the rooms exclusively to bona fide Japanese girls or to pimp-brokers who charged the foreign girls anywhere from $4,000 to $6,000 a month.

In a December, 1992 interview with Marco Polo magazine Mr. Hattori, head of the Koganechō Restaurant and Bar Association, commented on how the foreign girls had boosted the Koganechō economy by working for the brothels at a fraction of what Japanese prostitutes would work for. The Taiwanese girls who had come in a wave in the mid-eighties, he continued, were now all in their early thirties and somewhat "past it," and it was the rush of teenage Thai prostitutes in the 1990s that whipped new life into the streets.

The police have recently gone beyond their poster-pasting campaign, and have begun storming the brothels. In a 1991 onslaught, 156 prostitutes were dragged to the precinct, 118 of them Thai. In a January, 1992 raid, 80 more were arrested. Then a Thai girl got AIDS and was sent back to Thailand in disgrace, and new posters were put up throughout the area.

Another infamous area where brothels were quickly turned into restaurants on the eve of the Anti-Prostitution Law was Tobita in Osaka's Nishinari District. Tobita has more of a sensational past than its sister district in Yokohama. It had started off in the early 1600s as one of Osaka's seven cemeteries, and became notorious by doubling as a feared center to which Osaka criminals were dragged for execution. In the 1860s the cemetery moved east to the Abeno District, the execution center was closed down, and Tobita turned into a bustling slum.

Its career as a red-light district started in 1914 when a flash fire totally wrecked Minami, the most prominent red-light district in fin-de-siecle Osaka, just a mile north of Tobita. The rich but now destitute brothel owners were frantically scouting for prime brothel real estate. The consensus was that the new turf would have be close enough to Minami to keep old clients coming, but far enough from the charred ruins and the devastated roads and bridges to be easily accessible. The new territory, everyone agreed, had to be cheap. Tobita was the obvious choice, and in 1919 the first brothel opened, after much exorcism, pomp, and ceremony, on the grounds of the former cemetery. The neighborhood was scandalized and took to the streets in protest, but the Minami brothel owners had quickly formed the Hannan Real Estate Company and had systematically bought up the whole area.

Rows of brothels opened, and the Tobita red-light district stretched from Sanno and Tengachaya into the neighboring Tennoji District. Business was so good that desperate brothel owners even snatched up the northeastern corner of the Abeno Cemetery.

In 1928, the arrival of the Nankai Hirano Railroad clinched Tobita's red-light supremacy. The tracks were only five miles long and ran from Imaike, just outside Tobita, to the old Nankai Hirano Station. But now Tobita was accessible from all directions, and eager men cascaded in from surrounding districts. Two years later, by 1930, the brothel count was up to 220, with the prostitute count at a dizzying 2,700.

As the Anti-Prostitution Law went into effect on April Fools' Day in 1957, Tobita's rows of brothels, like those in Yokohama, hastily transformed themselves into ryōtei (restaurants), with the prostitutes changing into arubaito nojokyu (part-time waitresses). That same year, the government set up its first prostitute rehabilitation center in Tennoji, and although the prostitutes were slow in flocking in, a second center was set up the following year in nearby Nishinari. The brothels, aware of the delicacy of the situation, immediately protected themselves by forming a powerful "restaurant" association, which started working closely with the local mob and the police. The solidarity among the Tobita owners became so strong that all the brothel prices, services, and even the decor were standardized.

While the Yokohama brothels are a blend of concrete, corrugated iron, and wood, Tobita prides itself on sustaining the pre-war wooden yukaku (brothel) look. The association put much effort into steering clear from Tobita's dangerous former image of being among Osaka's largest red-light centers, and worked on publicly redefining itself as a shoten-gai (shopping center). It was common knowledge, however, that nothing had changed, and in 1960 the then young tabloid, Shūkan Taishū, proclaimed to the world that a beer, a snack, and a 40-minute session was available at any of the old Tobita haunts for ¥700. By the end of that year 3,164 Osaka prostitutes and pimps were dragged down to the precinct.

These days most of the action takes place after midnight. Walking around the blocks with their 150 brothels, the unsuspecting pedestrian might think he is in a quaint late-night noodle shop district, with row upon row of tiny weatherworn restaurants conveniently huddled one next to the other. As he looks in, past the colorful and short noren curtains hanging over the top half of the door, he will see an elderly lady in a kimono kneeling silently on a cushion next to a girl he might mistake for her fashion-conscious granddaughter. The pedestrian's suspicions, however, might be aroused as he peeks into the next store and sees yet another traditional matriarch with another young companion, and then further down another and another. As he walks back up the block in confusion, he notices that men are disappearing off the street to be led up staircases by the old women.

Each house has three or four girls who are organized into strict shifts by the elderly woman downstairs. The girls come down from their rooms to sit beside her one at a time, in five-minute shifts, so that passersby, wandering up and down the block, can see who is available. When a client enters the brothel the old lady jumps into action. She bustles about, bowing and uttering pleasantries, asking the client to follow her upstairs so she can "serve him a drink." The silent rule among Tobita madames is never to mention prices or sex before they have dragged the customer to the safety of the second floor. Once upstairs the charade is over, and the old lady rattles down the price list: a 20-minute quickie, $100; half an hour, $200; 40 minutes $250. "All our girls are healthy— here are the weekly blood-test results."

WATAKANO ISLAND

Japan's most brazen center of prostitution lies hidden in a distant corner of the Ise-shima National Park on Watakano, a tranquil and beautiful little island just off the Pacific coast. Watakano has remained the best-kept Japanese sex-trade secret, jealously nurtured by the Yakuza mob, which, since the Anti-Prostitution Law of 1957, has strictly guarded the Matoya Bay area in which the island lies. Men who travel to the national park for a two-day stay at the island's brothels arrive in groups at Anakawa Station on the Kintetsushima line. They have all made reservations in advance, and must state their name and city of origin before they can climb into the Yakuza-monitored vessel which will ferry them half a mile across the bay to the island. As they board, a guard with a cellular phone calls the brothels to confirm the guest list, and bogus customers, reporters, and policemen are dragged off the boat.

The island is flat and green, triangular in shape. It has 14 hotels, 23 red-light bars, and 200 prostitutes. The origin of the name of Watakano is a matter of heated dispute. Some of the prostitutes maintain that wata-ka-no should be written with the characters for "swimming over to set fire to the fields," while others contest this and use the more romantic characters "deer swim over to the fields."

As the boat docks at the concrete pier small parties of women wave energetically to welcome the clients.

WATAKANO—THE EARLY YEARS

Watakano Island has been a distinguished center of prostitution since the early seventeenth century. Legend has it that an impoverished faith-healer saved the dying daughter of Iemitsu, the third Shogun of Edo, shortly after he had come to power in 1623.

"Ask anything of me and it shall be granted!" the islanders report the grateful Shogun to have declared. So the faith-healer, kneeling before the ruler on an exquisite mat, requested 2,000 prostitutes and a license to set up brothels in the bays around Watakano, which lay strategically on the sea route halfway between Japan's largest medieval trading centers, Osaka and Edo (today's Tokyo). In those days, lines of fragile sailing vessels traveled cautiously from inlet to inlet, putting in at the slightest sign of a storm, and the bored sailors would sit on beaches in somber groups, their pockets full of freshly earned coins. The faith-healer changed all that. According to the islanders, the Shogun bought up the daughters and young wives of impoverished local families, and set up a splendid string of sea-view brothels all the way from Toba to Matoya.

These women became the first funajorō (ship whores) of the area. In the early days they were known as the sentakunin (washer-women). Housewives in need of extra cash would carefully fold all their finery into a bundle and, leaving for Matoya Bay, would explain to the neighbors that they were going down to the sea to do their washing. The direct forerunners of today's island prostitutes were mysteriously known as hashirigane, the etymology of which, after more than three centuries, is still unresolved on Watakano Island. Some of the women believe that whenever their predecessors saw a large ship they would hashiri (run) down to the beach, hastily throwing on their gone (the "metal" or jewelry they wore to work). Other women interpret hashirigane to mean "running crab": the prostitutes ran out onto the beach, shuffling like crabs in their tight kimonos and their clattering wooden geta sandals. Still others argue that their predecessors' name meant "fresh money"—they would snatch up a sailor's cash before he could spend it elsewhere—while a more conservative group maintains that hashirigane means "running needles." In the old days the prostitutes were very domestic, and would patch up their customer's clothes by running needles through them.

Today's women stay on the island, walking between the snackbars where they meet the clients and the hotels where they entertain them. The hashirigane of yesteryear were much more enterprising. Before the sailors had a chance to disembark, women would climb into a choro, a small wooden rowboat, and a villager known as a kogoshi, basically a pimp, would row from ship to ship as the men whistled and howled. The hashirigane separated themselves into three categories: anejorō, the senior women, more elegant, beautiful, and accomplished; the younger wakajorō; and the novices, the pinkoro. They scrambled onto the ships according to their rank and took position, the anejorō in the center where they could be admired from all angles, the younger wakajorō at the sides, and the youngest well out of the way by the ship's bow. When everyone was safely on board the women loosened their obi (sashes), stepped out of their kimonos, and struck elegant poses.

The hashirigane prospered for three centuries. Watakano islanders remember with nostalgia romantic tales of prostitutes of the most squalid backgrounds who married rich captains and moved to the capital to become respected matrons. At the height of the trade boom of the late nineteenth century rows of ships were docked next to each other, so that an enterprising hashirigane could hoist herself from deck to deck working her way from Watakano across the bays to Anori.

Prostitutes split up into factions to deal with the mounting workload. Super-elite women remained in their exclusive boudoirs on the island and took calls from captains and wealthy merchants. The less powerful hashirigane who still had to ride out to the boats came to be known as noriko (riding girls). Astute businesswomen, they carefully selected the boats they would target; with the unfortunate boom in the dung-trade between Edo and Osaka, they steered clear of the clumps of grungier vessels. The dung-merchants were serviced by desperate prostitutes who were referred to by their more successful colleagues as guso (shits).

THE LAST OF THE HASHIRIGANE

At the beginning of the twentieth century the era of the sailing vessel came to an end. Large and powerful ships set their sights on international ports, and horrified prostitutes saw all their old customers steam right past the bays. The panicking women were saved by the Suzuki Corporation in Kobe City, which built a gigantic shipyard in the area, bringing in thousands upon thousands of workers. The hashirigane left the beaches and settled inland.

On Watakano Island brothels such as Yokarō, Kinseirō, and Tomoerō soon came into their own, and nightly parties were arranged in the dining rooms of Osakaya and Takashimaya, the island's main hotels. Even respectable local women energetically 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!