A Modern History of the Standing-up Prostitute: Men Motioned to Be Approached…High-Class Street Prostitutes Also Appeared from the Meiji to the Early Showa Eras

This is the second part of a two-part series on the “history of tachimbo,” written by customs journalist Akira Ikoma. While there were poor street prostitutes who were forced to make a living, high-class street prostitutes who catered to rich customers emerged from the Meiji period to the prewar Showa period.

Part 1 Women “operating” under the floors of temples and in graveyards…The “bottom-ranked street prostitutes” who proliferated during the Meiji period.

Street girls” appeared in the early Showa period.

The rapid development of urban society following the Meiji Restoration led to an increase in the number of “poor street prostitutes. At the same time, however, there were also “rich street prostitutes” who catered to the wealthy during the Meiji era.

In Yokohama, the port city that opened its port to the outside world, “street prostitutes” who stood by the side of Western merchant buildings and solicited foreign customers appeared. They were called “hookers ” or “lashamen. Rashamen” were Japanese concubines for foreigners, and were also called “yosho” or “gaisyo ” (foreign concubines). Foreigners called them “Yokohama wives. In the early days, all the women were prostitutes, but when they learned that they could make a good living, they became rachamen one after another.

The “tachimbo for foreign sailors” was nicknamed “tensen orai” (ten-sen orai ) because the price was 10 sen. Toward the end of the Meiji period (1868-1912), well-dressed high-class street prostitutes began to appear, targeting high-class sailors. They charged 3 to 5 yen, more than 10 times the price of ordinary street prostitutes who charged 10 to 30 sen (100 sen = 1 yen; 5 yen in the Meiji era was worth more than 100,000 yen today).

Recently, wealthy inbounds mainly play at high-class soaps and delicatessens, not at tachinbo. This is because high-class street prostitutes are rarely found in today’s tachinbo. The price is usually set at around 10,000 to 20,000 yen, and you will almost never find them at 100,000 yen or more.

In the early Showa period (1926-1989), street prostitutes appeared in downtown areas such as Ginza, Tokyo. They were called “street girls. The name “street girls” came about because many of them were dressed in Western-style clothing and were considered to be different from the dirty street prostitutes of the past. They lured customers not only on the street but also in cafes and other places, and served them in waiting rooms, inns, and other high-class establishments. Because of the strict vigilance of the police, the number of whores was small. The reason he was not caught by the police even though he boldly invited customers was due to the fact that he went out to earn money only five or six times a month, a small number. She never asked them out herself, but rather let the men who seemed to have money to spend motion for them to come to her.

The “Stick Girls” were “Showa-era daddy’s girls

There were three types of street girls in Ginza.

Contact” = A girl would come up behind you at a quick pace, make light contact with you as you passed by, take a few steps forward, and then look back.

Harikomi” = They stand in the darkness of a side street and whistle or smile at you before talking to you.

Norikomi = To pretend to be sick, stop a man’s car and get into it.

In Ginza, “stick girls” were also a hot topic. In this era, “stick girls” were women who were paid to “accompany men on walks,” but there were also women who “accompanied men at night. There were said to be 12 to 13 in all, some in groups and some alone. Unlike the stand-up men in Asakusa, these women were young, beautiful, and smart, and since they did not try to force their way into customers’ lives, they were difficult to find even if they could be found. At the time, there was such a fuss about whether or not they actually existed that the police began a strict crackdown on them.

This “stick girl” could be compared to today’s “daddy’s life. They would get an allowance just for going on dates, and if they wanted to earn a lot of money, they would engage in sexual acts. In the Heisei era, it was called “encore (meaning “aid dating”)” and became a social problem because it was popular among underage female students.

No longer “prostitutes of the lowest class,” standing girls

Street girls also existed in Yokohama and Kobe. In those days, “playing in Hama” meant “playing in Honmoku in Yokohama,” and Honmoku was one of the leading international prostitution districts in Japan. Honmoku was one of the leading international prostitution districts in Japan, and the “Honmoku girls” played to the lustful men not only of Japanese but of all over the world. In Kobe, they appeared in Suwayama Park, Nagata Shrine, and the Aoya area, with Suwayama Park being the most common. If one was not careful, he or she often fell into the trap of a beauty pageant. They were also found in Fukuhara, where as many as 370 kojos were concentrated, and would join the pimps at the entrances to the flower districts, on park benches, and in dark back alleys.

Although different from standing prostitutes, there were many unique forms of private prostitutes as in the Edo period. In the Meiji era (1868-1912), newspapers began to be published, but they did not spread to ordinary households, and a “newspaper and magazine browse shop” was established where newspapers and magazines were presented for people to browse through. A woman who worked as a store keeper there sold spring. The same was true of the women who worked as store keepers at target shooting parlors, young women who counted the points at billiard parlors, and women who were assigned to play with a single customer at go parlors.

A notable feature of “tachinbo” from the Meiji Restoration to the prewar Showa period was the emergence of “high-class street prostitutes” in Yokohama and Ginza. This is a major difference from the Edo period, when standing prostitutes were considered to be the lowest class of prostitutes. The street prostitutes were dressed in elegant clothes and served customers in the downtown area, not outdoors, but indoors at places such as theEnshuku (an inn that opened in the early Showa period, where customers could rest for as little as one yen) andMachiai Jaya (a teahouse that rented seats for intimate meetings between men and women or for the entertainment of geiko and customers), as in Kabukicho in Shinjuku in the Reiwa period (2025) or in Umeda in Osaka. The next article will discuss the “street prostitutes” in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

In the next article, we will examine the reality of street prostitutes in the postwar Showa period, with a focus on the “panpan” or standing prostitutes that abounded in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

Reference
Kindai Toshi Shigeki Shakai 1 (Modern Urban Lower Class Society 1), Kusama, Hachioo, Akashi Shoten, 1990.
A Sociological Study of Street Prostitutes, Yoji Watanabe, Hohkosha, 1950.
A Guide to Japanese Pleasure Towns, Kiyoshi Sakai, Chuokoron-shinsha, 2014.
Shinpen, Kuro no Seikatsu, Nakano Eizo, Yuzankaku, 2024.
Catalogue: A History of Sex in Japan, Third Edition, Yoshihiko Sasama, Yuzankaku, 2018.
Yami no Onna tachi (Women in the Dark), Goichi Matsuzawa, Shinchosha, 2016.

In addition, numerous other books and online media were referenced.