Akiko, Former Yoshiwara Worker, Captures Red-Light Districts’ Legacy

At one of the three major soap operas in Japan: ……

NHK’s 2013 historical drama “Belabo: Tsutaju Eika No Yume Banashi” (The Bessho: Tsutaju Eika No Yume Banashi). The main character, Tsutaya Shigesaburo, played by Ryusei Yokohama, was born in the Yoshiwara brothel in Edo, and lives his life while being deeply involved with the people living in Yoshiwara.

The popular anime “Oni no Kane no Kaede” is also set in Yoshiwara, and the brothels have been attracting attention since the beginning of Reiwa 2025. On the other hand, 66 years have passed since the Anti-Prostitution Law was fully enforced in 1958, and memories of the brothels are beginning to fade as demolition work begins this October on a former brothel in Higashioka-cho, Yamato Koriyama City, Nara Prefecture.

The red-light district photographer Beniko is taking pictures of such brothels and the former sites of the red line (areas where prostitution was practiced half-authorized) and blue line (areas where prostitution was practiced illegally).

I started taking photos of such places 4 years ago, and when I researched the history of these places, I found that many of them were former sites of the Red and Blue Lines. So three years ago, I started photographing places that used to be colorful districts.”

Beniko, now 52, worked in the sex industry from the age of 19 to 32. She started at a pin salon in Nishi-Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, moved to Yoshiwara, Tokyo, at age 22, and at age 28 moved to Picasso, a popular brothel known as one of the “top three soap operas in Japan. She worked there until the age of 32, when she quit after getting married. Perhaps it was inevitable that she would feel sympathy for the brothels and the former red-light district.

She started to use her current title when she started YouTube. At first, I was publishing videos with titles like “The History of the brothels as told by a former soap operative,” but YouTube is strictly regulated, so I couldn’t get any ads if I used direct words. After much trial and error, I settled on the title “Shirotown Photographer.

On her social networking accounts, such as X, she refers to herself as “Beniko, a former soap operative in Yoshiwara, @ Shikigai photographer,” a title that reflects her feelings.

She says, “I quit high school after about half a year, and I couldn’t even do a single calculation, so I couldn’t become a full-time employee. I found myself completely absorbed in the world of sex work, and at the time I was in agony, wondering why I could only stay in such a world.

I started taking pictures because I didn’t want to end my life regretting my past as a sex worker. I believe that my past as a sex worker is what makes it worthwhile for me to continue my current activities.

Beyond Underground and Subcultures

After dropping out of high school, Beniko entered an art school. She was also involved in art activities while working as a sex worker.

I had a yearning for the world of Shuji Terayama’s films and dark butoh dance. In the ’90s, when I jumped into the world of adult entertainment, it was also a time when adult entertainment was talked about along the lines of underground and subculture, so it is no small part of the reason why I went into the world of adult entertainment as an extension of that.

But the actual world of adult entertainment is not an underground world at all. It is a world that respects civility, so in order to be accepted by the customers who come to see us, we have to be the exact opposite of underground. When I did my art activities, I described myself as a “sex worker,” but in reality it was a way to make a living.

Although she had been away from creative activities for a long time due to the fact that she was a single mother raising her children with her own hands, Beniko began her career at the age of 48 as a “colorful town photographer who used to be a soap operative in Yoshiwara.

When she held her first photo exhibition, she feared that only male customers would come to the show, as if they were visiting a brothel, but the actual clientele was quite different.

We had a wide range of visitors, including women and elderly couples. The women seem to be viewing the films with their own lives and inner sexuality in mind. Some of the older visitors knew the brothels in their active years, so they seemed to feel nostalgia for the past from the photos. I was happy that they genuinely appreciated the photos.”

In October, a photo exhibition and street walking event was held at “Barkomado” on the Itokawaberi side of the old red line in Atami City, Shizuoka Prefecture. The event was a great success. However, some people did not like the event.

Many people consider the former brothels and red light district to be a “negative legacy,” and many people have had a hard time because they grew up in the area. It is natural for them to be concerned that they might be described in a disreputable way. It is natural to feel uneasy about this.

However, when we actually showed them the photos, they appreciated them properly. We don’t want to inconvenience the people who continue to live in the area, so we try to interact with the locals before taking photos, and whenever possible, we ask the locals for permission to use their photos in photo exhibitions or photo books. There are some that we would have liked to use, but decided not to show them in our photo exhibition.”

In recent years, there has been a movement to reuse former brothels, such as an old private house café that reuses a building that once stood on the site of the Nakajima brothel in Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture.

Some people are critical, but I can only be thankful that they are being preserved. It has been 66 years since the Anti-Prostitution Law was fully enforced, so it is inevitable that the buildings from that time have been torn down for seismic reasons. However, if that is the case, I would like to see it renewed and at least part of its history preserved.

Ryokan Hashimoto no Kaoru,” located in the former Hashimoto Amusement Center in Kyoto, has been repaired and preserved by the owner, who is from China, with an understanding of the history of the amusement center era. It is one of the few remaining yugakuji sites that allow visitors to go inside, so I hope you will visit it once.

A crowdfunding campaign is currently underway until January 31, 2013, for the publication of a second photo book, “Beniko’s Shikigai Tansaku Ki 2” (Beniko’s Exploration of Colorful Town 2). As of November 25, over 3.16 million yen has already been raised.

He said, “We live in a wonderful age where you can learn a lot of things on YouTube and other sites by searching on the Internet. I started learning photography in earnest at the age of 48. I hope to convey the message that people can be reborn at any age.

I know that some people are interested in brothels because of historical dramas and popular cartoons, but there is a history of women being sold to brothels in the past as a way to reduce their debt or to make ends meet, and then being buried there. I hope that my photographs and the site of the former brothels will give visitors a sense of this part of the history.

Text and Photography by Yoshimi Mizuno
After working for an editing production company and a publishing company, she became a freelance writer. She enjoys touring Japan’s deepest spots and writing articles on public gambling, as well as interviews with celebrities.