| / travel & nightlife / japan part 1 · love hotels · the wa · sexual history · kabuki-cho · manga, movies and pervert shops · copping a feel · support dating · |
 The ugly irony is that support dating and other forms of prostitution still thrive in spite of general economic prosperity. Geisha of the Yoshiwara were often sold to brothels by their hard-up families, but young women of the modern mizu shobai hardly share the same predicament. "They could be doing something else, but where else can you make 50,000 [yen] a day, tax free, for six hours of work?" said a blowjob-ya manager who wanted to be identified only as Yasu. "All the girls work here by choice."
Maybe that's the ultimate hedonism, serving up your body to the masses because you want good clothes, in essence dying for your own consumerist sins. Or maybe it's the ultimate desire for unity, giving fellatio because you simply want to dress like everybody else, to belong to the clique represented by All Other Japanese Girls. Maybe the self-image that society has modeled for you places more importance on a fashionable designer tag than your own physical intimacy. Any armchair sociologist can try to suss out the reasons behind Japan's tremendous accommodation for paid pleasure, but ask the consumers and the consumed themselves, and you hit the wall of Japanese practicality. When asked "why" -- about the Soaplands, the prevalence of rape fantasies, the blowjob-yas -- the answers are shockingly similar. "It's fun, and I make good money." "It's just like any other job." "It is what it is." Frankly and ambivalently, the Japanese take the sex, the booze and the social expectations of both with little analysis. For them, blowjobs are no different from any other job -- judging by the nervous, uneasy faces of typical customers, maybe the indignities of the mizu shobai are actually fewer than for the O.L.s who are still expected to brew and serve tea for their offices. No one revels in the debauchery. It is what it is.
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