From 400 to 17 due to “exposures” and “business failures”… Can the “strip industry”, a “dying industry”, survive?

Shocking Exposure of “Toyo Show Theater,” One of the Largest in Western Japan

On November 19, 2012, a total of ten men and women, including the manager and dancers of “Toyo Show Theater,” a strip joint in Kita-ku, Osaka, were arrested on charges of public indecency.

The arrest shook the strip industry, as it is one of the “largest and best-established theaters in western Japan,” founded in 1985, with annual sales of about 260 million yen.

The theater had become a tourist attraction, with foreign customers accounting for 10% of its clientele in recent years. The police decided to expose the theater because of concerns that it would become a tourist attraction due to the increase in foreign tourists. With the Osaka-Kansai Expo coming up in 2013, the Osaka Prefectural Police are stepping up their efforts to clean up the entertainment districts visited by tourists, and it is said that the busts are a kind of “show-and-tell” for the police.

In April 2009, “Theater Ueno” in Ueno, Tokyo, was busted and six people, including the manager and dancers, were caught red-handed on charges of public indecency. This is believed to be part of a cleanup operation in anticipation of the Tokyo Olympics.

It is said that there were nearly 400 strip clubs in Japan in the 1970s, when they were at their peak. However, they began to decline with the end of the Showa period, and now only 17 remain. They are now “dying out.