up by midnight.
The Japanese police meant business. That same year, more than 6,500 people (6,575, to be exact) were arrested for trying to break this law, and many of the most seasoned soapland and massage parlor owners broke down under the strain and closed up shop. In Tokyo alone, by Valentine's Day, 1986—exactly one year after the law took effect—38 of 281 massage parlors had gone out of business.
The result of the turbulent eighties was to make the soapland world of the nineties tougher, more flexible, and better equipped to fight for its clientele with competing sex-bars, -clubs, and -cabarets. Many soaplands have placed greater emphasis on catchy theme decor. Tokyo's Ichiriki Chaya (Topnotch Tea House), for instance, specializes in medieval Japan. The soap ladies wear formal kimonos, are well drilled in the complexities of tea ceremony, and perform their washes to the elegant sounds of the koto. Another Tokyo soapland, Yangu Redii (Young Lady), is known for its wild kanja purē (patient play) with nurses in starched uniforms. On New Year's Day the Yangu Redii customer receives a pretty embroidered pouch with a single pubic hair from his favorite nurse in it. Other places offer soap ladies disguised as airline hostesses, executive secretaries, and elementary or high school girls (who are actually safely in their twenties). Some soaplands take "themes" even further, punishing naughty customers with enemas, or changing the more eccentric client's diapers.
The nineties have also brought with them a flourish of larger and kinkier soaplands in the provinces. These sprang up after the harsh St. Valentine laws of 1985, which included a very strict zoning clause. New bathhouses, it stated, would not be permitted within 100 yards of schools, sports facilities, libraries, or child-welfare establishments. Some Japanese cities, in deference to the sick, even went so far as to add hospitals to the list. Soapland speculation ground to a halt. As a gesture of open-mindedness, however, the government allowed the opening of new establishments in the nation's old red-light areas, such as Tokyo's Yoshiwara, Kyoto's Gion, Osaka's Shinmachi, and Hakata's Nakasu. But the Japan Bath Association was not mollified. They complained that downtown real estate had so rocketed in price that no one could afford the space a respectable soapland would require. Furthermore, they would be beset by bars, clubs, and parlors of every denomination, and would have to fight for their lives. But the government refused to budge. As a result, soapland entrepreneurs left town and built newer, bigger, and brighter establishments on inter-city highways and in unfashionable industrial suburbs.
In the early nineties a surprise recession hit Japan and many middle-priced soaplands hit the skids and had to offer bargain washes and become what is known today as a kakuyasu sōpu (bargain soap). The prices of the most successful and exclusive of Tokyo's 257 soaplands, however, have not been affected by the recession and have continued to rise unhampered. In Yoshiwara, Tokyo's ancient red-light district; there are no fewer than 80 luxury soaplands that do not wash their clients for less than $450. The soap ladies there are models between jobs and triple-X video stars, and the bath areas in which they wash their customers have extra bedrooms, living rooms, and private bar facilities in which regulars can keep their own whiskey bottles. Clients can arrive and leave in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, unless they specifically request something more discreet like a Toyota. While the cheap soapland hands out loud business cards, often pink in color with beckoning naked women, a classy establishment will sport the logo of a reputable bank, with the woman's name subtitled with "Section Chief or "International Representative."
Tokyo's most expensive soapland is Shangrila, where the two-hour specials start at $750. A few streets down Saten Doru (Satin Doll), Kurabu Enjoi (Club Enjoy), and Mink start at $700, while Gurando Kanyon (Grand Canyon) and Ginbasha (Silver Carriage) are a close third at $650. Business has been so steady at these cream-of-the-crop establishments that a new super-chic soapland, Maharaja Tokyo, opened with a flourish in Tokyo's Yoshiwara on New Year's Day 1993, offering a special two-hour wash for $550. The red-light crowd was stunned that a place of such grand proportions would dare to set up shop right in the middle of Japan's darkest recession in years—and that within walking distance of Yoshiwara's other 160 soaplands.
All soaplands, rich and poor, have had to extend their service menus. There is no limit to the extremes a modern hard-line soap lady will go to titillate her client—the more imaginative and delicate her touch, the more money she can extract from her client. From northern Hokkaido to southern Okinawa, soap ladies are encouraged to come up with new specialties, using tongues, breasts, knees, and toes in ever more creative ways. Like any other Japanese employer, the soapland is quick to spot good workers who throw themselves into their jobs, and dexterous women are given quick promotions and incentives like better "private rooms" and the highly fought-over titles of "Senior Soap Lady" and "Number One Body-Washer."
Soaplands increasingly present their massage-and-wash extravaganzas with the fanfare of an elite restaurant displaying its prized dishes. There is a growing trend to equate a delicate palate with delicate physical sensations. Sex-massages and body-washes appear under titles like furu kōsu (full course) or osupe (special, as in "special of the day"), sometimes coming out even more mysteriously as sanshoku sushi (triple-combo sushi) or osashimi moriawase (sashimi deluxe). Massage menus offer the customer the choice of a range of services that become progressively more expensive the more outlandish they are. The basic prix fixe bath fee averages $100 to $300, depending on the elegance and location of the establishment. For this price the customer is bathed in a tub, and then rubbed down from head to foot while he lies naked on an inflated rubber mattress. If the client is interested in a more venturesome massage— including extras such as fellatio, cunnilingus, anal stimulation, or sex—it will add anywhere from $300 to $500 to the bill.
All the services offered in the soaplands are camouflaged in the guise of "we are washing the customer." Over the years, establishments throughout the country have contributed their own special brands of sex-massage and intercourse supesharu (specials), and have titled them with upbeat suffixes such as play, game, dance, and wash.
Turkish baths, and then later soaplands, were always fiercely competitive among themselves. Each establishment has its dai (trainer) whose job it is to keep the soap ladies' technique up to scratch. When a particular place becomes an overnight success, with lines at the door and the parking lot overflowing, rival soaplands instantly send out their dai on a spying mission to report on any innovative items on the opponent's menu. The result has been that daringly novel "washes" that had drawn clients to new establishments in places like Kanagawa or Tochigi are now available in all soaplands.
The basic soapland service is bodii arai (body wash), in which the soap lady cleans and scrubs the customer, first in the tub then on the mat, until he climaxes. Another basic is awa odori (foam dance). In this special wash, the woman pours lotions and creams all over her body and then rubs and "dances" her client to orgasm. In some soaplands this is also known as shabon dansu (soap dance). The most popular item on the menu is the furu kōsu (full course): a body wash which escalates into a foam dance, followed by an optional body-lick where the client is licked from head to toe, with sexual intercourse as the grand finale.
THE SOAPLAND MENU
ANARU ZEME—Anal Attack
In this type of attack the client's anus is stimulated by massage, fingering, or licking. In some soaplands it can also be used to refer to anal sex, with the customer "attacking" the soap lady.
Other soapland synonyms for anal massage are the fashionable wan-wan sutairu, literally the "woof-woof," or what we may call doggie style; bakon bakon (bang bang); and the facetiously circumspect yoko kara semeru (conquering from the side).
When a customer wishes to sodomize a soap lady in one of the more luxurious soaplands, the poetic and elegantly evasive term used is ichi notani (the first valley—the second valley being the vagina).
CHIJŌ
