The Hidden Truth Behind Nishi-Kawaguchi’s Long-Standing “Gentlemen Only” and “Minors Prohibited”

Underground saunas still operating in the ruins of a north korean ghost town

Nishi-Kawaguchi. Kawaguchi is a town that has been in the news recently for the friction between the Kurdish community and local residents. Just outside the west exit of Nishi-Kawaguchi Station is an entertainment district, lined with soaplands and health clubs.

Nishi-Kawaguchi Station opened in 1954 after the opening of Kawaguchi Auto Racing in 1952, and the entertainment district developed along with it. The Urawa Racecourse and BOAT RACE Toda (Toda Boat Racecourse) are also located in close proximity. Men always want to go to the sex industry whether they win or lose at gambling. Nishi-Kawaguchi has been meeting this demand for a long time.

And Nishi-kawaguchi is known for NK style. It stands for “Nishi-Kawaguchi Style,” and is what is called a “honsaro” (a “honsban salon”). In its heyday, there were more than 200 such establishments, whose interior design and decor resembled a pin salon, but where Japanese women in their twenties offered sexual intercourse for around 10,000 yen. This was until the mid-1900s.

The NK style, which had been flourishing, was destroyed before the Reiwa era, but here in Nishi-kawaguchi, there is still an unusual type of store. To be frank, it is a sauna, but since I am writing about it in this way, of course it is no ordinary sauna. It is an “underground sauna” that is “for gentlemen only” and “off-limits to minors.

To put it simply, it is a “sauna with sexual services. It is not an urban legend, and its existence has not been unknown until now. Many people who are interested in the backstage sex scene may be familiar with it.

There are two underground saunas across the Nishi-Kawaguchi station. The names are ○○○○ sauna and XX sauna. I have actually experienced both saunas, and the services are surprisingly the same. The prices are not much different either. I even thought they were affiliated because they were so identical. I won’t go into the specifics here, but both saunas have a reputation for offering a very unusual experience.

Why do these unusual saunas exist in Nishi-Kawaguchi? This is a guess, but there are no public bathhouses in the Nishi-Kawaguchi Station area; perhaps there was a demand for a place to wash oneself after using the NK style. The point is that the NK style was a main salon. Probably the majority of them did not have showers (the biggest difference between health and salon is whether they have showers or not).

Many men probably wanted to clean off their sweat after having sex with a woman and go home. The creators of the sauna may have thought that if they added akasuri (a type of body scrubbing) and a de-bubbling service in addition to the public bath sauna, they would be able to meet the demand of men who come to Nishi-Kawaguchi. By the way, ○○○○ saunas have existed since the early 2000s, but the NK style was wiped out by state power in 2006 and every single sauna was destroyed.

Although the NK style is gone, these underground saunas continue to operate as symbols of Nishi-Kawaguchi.

In the paid version of “FRIDAY GOLD,” Pinappo Urach’s report on the actual infiltration of underground saunas is introduced with photos.