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

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.