The Delivery Health Rush: How Legalization Sparked Growth—And Problems
By 2025, the Entertainment Business Law had been revised no fewer than 38 times. In journalist Akira Ikoma’s series “The History of Entertainment Business Law Revisions”, he examines the historical contexts behind these amendments and the impacts they had on the sex industry. Part 3 focuses on the 1998 and 2001 revisions. The first half addresses the 1998 revision that legalized delivery health services.
The Blurring Line Between Professionals and Amateurs
After the burst of the economic bubble, Japan entered a prolonged slump—what came to be called the “Lost Decade”—stretching from the early 1990s into the early 2000s. Even during this period of stagnation, the Entertainment Business Law underwent major revisions, in 1998 and again in 2001, 14 years after the previous sweeping amendment.
Behind these changes were the rapid spread of the internet and mobile phones, as well as the transformations in the sex industry brought on by globalization.
In the 1990s, telephone clubs and two-shot dial services—businesses that arranged encounters between men and women via phone—gained popularity, and participation spread even to amateur women. For women looking to make pocket money, telephone clubs became a means of prostitution. Among those engaging in compensated dating through such venues were high school and junior high school girls—and in rare cases, even elementary school girls.
Under such circumstances, older laws that had been premised on the existence of professional prostitutes lost much of their meaning. As the boundary between amateurs and professionals blurred, the clear outlines of businesses that enforcement had relied upon became indistinct, making effective regulation difficult.
At the same time, the sex industry was expanding to incorporate services catering to diverse sexual preferences—such as S&M, fetishism, and cross-dressing. Sexual services became more extreme, and the sprawling entertainment built around sex was dubbed the ejaculation industry.
In this way, incidents like schoolgirl prostitution via telephone clubs, along with new forms of business that the law had never anticipated, began to stir public concern. The existing Entertainment Business Law proved inadequate for tackling these developments. The old framework could no longer keep pace with social realities, making it necessary to revise the law once again.
Outcall Services, Once an Underground Business, Legalized
The sweeping 1998 revision greatly expanded the types of sex-related businesses subject to regulation. Of particular note was the introduction of new categories such as non-storefront and video transmission businesses. Traditional operations with physical premises where customers came to the shop were classified as storefront.
With the creation of the non-storefront category in the law, outcall-style fashion health businesses were formally incorporated into the regulated framework, effectively legalizing them. These were sex services in which operators, upon receiving a call from a customer, dispatched women to the specified location. Initially called outcall health, they later became widely known as delivery health (deriheru).
The legal text described such businesses as “operations that provide services involving contact with customers of the opposite sex to satisfy their sexual curiosity in residences or facilities used for lodging.” This meant the destination could be not only hotels but also the customer’s own home.
Like storefront health services, deriheru operators were forbidden to employ or serve persons under 18. Advertising and promotional activities were also subject to the same restrictions as storefront establishments.
Before the revision, outcall sex services included so-called date clubs and hotel call businesses, which had become so widespread they were said to be flooding the market. Operators scattered pink flyers in public phone booths and advertised flamboyantly. Male customers would call the number on a flyer, and a woman would be dispatched to the hotel room where he had checked in, leading to prostitution. Outcall sex services had not been covered under the 1984 revision.
In urban areas, pink flyers and handbills were even tossed into ordinary household mailboxes, sparking social controversy. The police struggled to deal with these elusive operators. To bring order to the situation, the law was revised to require outcall businesses to file with the Public Safety Commission, placing them under official oversight.
A Startup Boom Quadruples the Number of Deriheru
After the revised Entertainment Business Law went into effect on April 1, 1999, operators initially watched the police closely. Many feared that “once we file our notifications, they’ll all be shut down at once.” But no such crackdown occurred on registered businesses.
Seeing this, operators of underground services like date clubs and hotel-call agencies concluded that “it’s better to be officially acknowledged than to stay in the shadows” and began filing notifications one after another. Even salaried workers considering quitting their jobs joined in, convinced that “the authorities must be backing this business.”
For novices with little experience or knowledge, non-storefront operations were easy to start. Unlike running a physical shop with high rent, linking customers and women through a single mobile phone was cheaper and less likely to draw enforcement. At first, advertising costs were minimal—just a three-line ad in an evening or sports newspaper, or a listing in a local adult information magazine.
This triggered a rush of new businesses. In the very year of the revision, 2,684 establishments filed nationwide, and numbers skyrocketed. By 2000, the figure reached 5,425; by 2001, 8,434. In just five years from 2000 to 2004, the number of deriheru quadrupled. Such explosive growth was unprecedented in the sex industry.
Looking back now, the legalization of deriheru marked a major turning point—a watershed for the industry. As the virtually only type of sex business open to new entrants, it attracted participants from a wide range of other industries, intensifying market competition. As a result, the sex industry’s power balance shifted dramatically, with outcall services rising to become the mainstream of the trade.
The Negative Effect of Sex Workers’ Impoverishment
The legalization of outcall services brought major changes for women working in the sex industry. Increasingly, ordinary women began taking it up as an easy and efficient part-time job. Since deriheru didn’t require showing up at a physical shop and allowed them to earn money even late at night, it was an exceptionally convenient option for amateurs. The system drew vast numbers of women with no prior experience into the trade, blurring the old distinction between professionals and non-professionals.
In the past, the sex industry operated in a legally gray zone and entering it required courage and determination. For a long time, barriers like “it might be dangerous” or “it might be illegal and frightening” helped maintain the balance between supply and demand. But the rapid surge of legalized outcall businesses destroyed that balance, leading to an oversupply of both establishments and sex workers.
The fierce competition among shops and among women eventually resulted in a situation where many could no longer earn a living, even in the sex industry. This was unforeseen—and could be called a negative effect produced by the law’s revision.
Ironically, a law meant to create a better society ended up spawning a new problem: the impoverishment of sex workers.
When tachimbo (street prostitution) boomed in Tokyo and Osaka in the Reiwa era, one of the underlying causes may have been the legal recognition of deriheru back then. With storefront businesses declining and outcall services multiplying, the sex trade became less visible, worsening women’s working conditions. As a result, some voices now say, “Legalizing outcall prostitution was a mistake.”
Still, deriheru could be banned at any time. The scope of the Entertainment Business Law changes with the era. If that happens, new service models will no doubt emerge and thrive.
The rise of deriheru also had a major impact on other branches of the sex industry. One of the hardest-hit was pinsaro. Until then, it had served as the entry point for amateur women starting in sex work. Gradually, deriheru took over that role. With stronger crackdowns on storefront establishments, their numbers plummeted, and today they face a crisis of survival.
References
Teihon Fūzoku Eigyō Torishimari by Yoshikazu Nagai, Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2015
Nippon Hanzai Kyō Jidai by Ken Kitashiba, Fusōsha, 2009
Fūzoku Shinkaron by Fumio Iwanaga, Heibonsha, 2009
Shōwa Heisei Nippon Seifūzokushi by Mitsuru Shirakawa, Tenbōsha, 2007
Nihon no Fūzoku-jō by Atsuhiko Nakamura, Shinchōsha, 2014
(Along with many other books, online media, and references.)
Interview, text, and photographs： Akira Ikoma