the way to handing in this manuscript were a few friends indeed. Many would rather not see their names published here for reasons that will become obvious as you peruse the chapters, but let me assure the reader that those inscribed here for posterity mostly engaged in assisting with the more mundane but nonetheless extremely valuable tasks of helping with translations, proofreading, and passing along valuable contacts.
Nadja Kelman spent hours on the phone tracking down leads as her Japanese is much superior to mine. Her polite and fluent Osaka-accented voice helped open many doors. Kim Aylward journeyed into some venues where the doors were closed to me to get the woman's perspective on the host bars. Ms. Ishimura, Ms. Yamazaki, Mr. Fujii, Mr. Fujita, and many other Japanese friends were always there when I needed them for advice and assistance. A debt of gratitude is due to colleague E. Vincent Sherry for understanding why I was a bit bleary-eyed during the times we were working together on more highbrow journalistic endeavors.
Thanks to a couple of broadcasting legends, the two Bruces, Mac Donnel and Dunning, who in large part are responsible for making it possible for me to remain in Japan. Fellow authors or journalists Eric Sedinsky, Mike Millard, Jude Brand, Mark Schreiber, Boye Lafayette De Mente, Peter Hadfield, Bob Collins, and Philip Sandoz gave invaluable advice about the nuts and bolts of the publishing world if not the water trade.
My editor deserves a large share of the praise, but not the condemnation, for making sure this book made it to the galleys. Disc jockey and backgammon buddy Robert Susumu-Harris was kind enough to give the book some pre-publication publicity on J-Wave radio. Another veteran Asia hand, we'll call Buffalo Bill, went above and beyond the call of duty in making the S&M chapter possible. His scariest journalistic assignment will undoubtedly be the subject of Press Club gossip for years to come.
Although this is perhaps one of its more dubious accolades during its nearly 50 years, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan also proved for this author to be an invaluable hangout for meeting contacts and its staff made the goings so much easier as it has for many budding and veteran Tokyo foreign scribes.
Finally, a hearty toast to an antecedent by the name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens whose spirit hopefully permeates this undertaking.
INTRODUCTION
History of Sex in Japan
My deflowering in the pink world of Japan came in 1981, when a group of bank employees from Yamagata stationed in Tokyo asked me to join them on an outing to a nō-pan kissa near Kanda. Never one to turn down an invitation to carouse, I accepted while trying to figure just what kind of place we were heading to. Still struggling to learn Japanese, I knew that kissa was short for kissaten, the word for coffee shop. But what was so special about a coffee house that made a point of not serving bread? (Pan is the Japanese word for bread, taken from the Portuguese.)
On our entrance to the establishment, I noticed that bread was not the only thing missing. All of the waitresses were topless. Despite being over the legal age, it was my first time in such an environment (except for brief glimpses of the breasts of showgirls on the casino showroom stages of my hometown of Las Vegas) and I immediately began worrying about what the protocol was. What would I do if the waitress asked me if I wanted something besides a drink? While enmeshed in my angst I tried not to stare at the bevy of breasts prancing about the kissaten.
My bank salarymen buddies were carrying on as if there was nothing unusual. None of them appeared to be sneaking glances at the trio of topless young women.
A couple of mizuwari (whiskey and water on the rocks) later, I asked Toshi from the foreign currency department why the place was referred to as a "no-pan kissa." "Steve-san, you don't know?" he chided me as if I had just arrived from Narita Airport. "Pan is Japanese-English for panty. Nō-pan is no panty."
The waitresses were wearing short skirts so it seemed academic that they were naked below the only piece of clothing in which they were attired. I explained this to Toshi. 'They're not wearing panty. Didn't you notice?" He pointed to the mirror on the floor in front of the sofa we were all sitting on. Now I realized why all the guys were glancing down every time one of the girls approached us. The next time one of the waitresses strolled over I glanced down too and discovered truth in advertising.
During the remainder of my initial two-year stay in Japan I only once more ventured into a no-pan kissa where customers were automatically served a poor quality of tea and there was nothing else on the menu. I left after about five minutes. I just didn't get it, I told myself. The experience didn't seem very erotic, a bit like those topless carwashes popping up in Florida, a novelty and little else.
When I returned to Japan in 1990 I was reintroduced to the "pink" world, as it is called here. I was nearly ten years older than when I had lived here before, divorced, and more able just to relax and have a good time out with the boys watching women do their stuff on the stages of Kabukicho. It was also, I discovered, a great way to engage in that all-important art of nemawashii—root binding. In Japanese business, it seems that men who have spent an evening together staring at breasts can do business. It was all a part of that macho buddy stuff that my feminist friends had cast so much scorn upon.
It is, of course, not unfair to label Japan a sexist country. In Japanese society, a woman's place is still mostly in the home or in the office serving tea, and the tolerance for sexual hijinks committed by boyfriends and husbands, even strangers on crowded commuter trains, is much higher among women here than perhaps anywhere else in the world (evidenced by the oft-repeated stories about wives packing condoms into the luggage of husbands embarking on business trips to Southeast Asia). In much of Asia, especially Japan, sex has never been cast in the dark light it has been in the more puritanical societies of Britain and North America. Christian guilt is missing from Japan's history (at least until it was introduced by the Jesuit missionaries who frowned upon much of Japan's traditional ribaldry from fertility festivals to mixed outdoor bathing).
It must have been a shock for the Christian pioneers to learn of the Shinto story of the creation of Japan, filled with orgies and incest. Buddhism was no better, with its Tachikawa-Ryu sect which embraced sex as an avenue to satori, espousing that Buddhahood resided in a woman's vagina. Then there were such heros as the Zen master Tesshu in the Meiji era who sought enlightenment by attempting to sleep with every courtesan in the country. (He failed, but reported having a great time along the way and discovering that lust is the root of all existence and thus the meaning of Zen.) Perhaps this is why the Jesuits (despite building first-rate universities in Japan) and the more recent battalions of shirt-and-tie Mormon missionaries on bicycles have made little headway in actually converting the Japanese. Homegrown new religions, which don't preach restrictions on sexual behavior, have done much better.
Preachy Westerners, aghast at such Japanese history, should first delve into their own legacies where they will be nonplussed to discover harlots among the holy places of such ancient and sanctified cultures as Rome and Jerusalem. Even in the time of Shakespeare, the convents were places of dubious reputation—ask an English literature scholar, for example, what Hamlet meant when he cried, "Get thee to a nunnery!"
Japan, however, has not escaped immune from the attempted introduction of supposed Western morals to its shores. The country has always been sensitive to what outsiders think about it, be it mixed public bathing or the consumption of whale meat. Both survive to a limited extent. Since the beginning of the Meiji era (1868-1912), Japan, in its quest to modernize, has sought to embrace Western technology, if not its ideas and moral standards. Unfortunately, with the demise of the shogunate, a romantic chapter of Japanese history which had begun with the melancholic Heian era (794-1185) closed. During the Heian era, polygamy was all the rage among the noble class, a second wife being captured after an exchange of poetic correspondence and a nightly liason or two at the lady's house. For those not in a financial position to afford wives number two, three, and four, ladies of pleasure were abundant and made appearances at parties hosted by the elite.