The “hellscape” of the COVID-19 crisis, when “backstabbing” and “shitty customers” threatened the industry’s very existence.

Twenty-seven years have passed since its birth. Today, the delicatessen industry is the largest sex industry in Japan. It was the COVID-19 crisis that began in the winter of 2008 that brought the industry to an unprecedented crisis of survival, something the industry as a whole had never experienced before. This is the first part of the fifth article in a series in which sex industry journalist Akira Ikoma explores the history of the delicatessen industry.

Delhi girls in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis

Since February 2008, when the threat of a new type of coronavirus began to be whispered, sex industry establishments began to go quiet ahead of other industries. The number of customers declined, and sales at many establishments dropped by about half.

The COVID-19 crisis had a devastating effect on the delicatessen workers. Only regular customers came, and the number of new customers plummeted. Ironically, the number of delicatessen workers, on the contrary, increased. The number of ordinary women entering the sex industry increased due to unemployment and closures caused by the COVID-19 crisis.

In addition, as a result of the closure of many store-type brothels and the flow of sex workers to delicatessen, waiting rooms were overflowing with women waiting for work. In some stores, the number of women waiting for work was three times as many as usual. While the number of customers had dropped by half due to the request to refrain from going out, the number of girls on the waiting list was increasing day by day, resulting in a clear oversupply.

One married women’s delicatessen in Tokyo said that there were days when she had “no customers,” and many days when she had “only one customer. In many cases, single mothers with small children were unable to come to work because of the school vacations, and they were unable to earn money.

Unable to earn as much money as they would like, these sex workers began to work with other establishments or concurrently work as non-contact chat ladies. In addition, an increasing number of women have turned to “direct prostitution” (also known as “backdoor prostitution”), which involves taking customers without going through a brothel, such as private prostitution, papa-activities, and drinking at a bar (where women receive a reward for participating in a drinking party). These acts not only destroy the relationship of trust between the store and the customer, but are also dangerous and can easily lead to trouble. The damage caused by the COVID-19 crisis was so severe that the women could not make a living unless they were prepared to accept the consequences.

However, there were women who were able to make a good living despite the COVID-19 crisis. They were the women who had clients to nominate. Because of the sentiment that “ it is safer to play with a woman you know well than with a woman you do not know,” many regular customers came once a week or once a month, even during the COVID-19 crisis. The presence of these women, who were able to make money even during this period when the number of customers had ceased, was a boon to the store.

The girls who had reservations or regular customers were prioritized in terms of attendance. The store also gave priority to the few free customers so that popular women would not quit the store because they could not earn enough money. Because of this, the COVID-19 crisis had little effect on the women with the highest nominations.

On the other hand, women who could not get nominations fell into a vicious cycle : they moved to other salons because they could not make money, and then moved again because they could not make money there; or they went to work in the countryside because they could not make money in the city, but they could not make money there either because of oversupply. The COVID-19 crisis led to a clear line between what women could earn and what they could not, and a large difference in income was created.

The clientele also changed.

The same was true for the stores, which were forced to cope with a sharp drop in earnings. One delicatessen in Tokyo laid off some of its male staff and cut the remaining staff by 30% of their salaries. The company also laid off all of its pick-up and drop-off drivers, and decided to have its employees work as pick-up and drop-off drivers as well.

Since the company was forced to make do with only the existing staff while sales did not return, the operations of the management staff were reviewed from the ground up. Since deli service is a job where the reception staff does not serve many customers at once, but can respond to customers by phone, e-mail, and LINE, it was possible to run the business with a small group of elite staff.

In Uguisudani, Tokyo, known for its high concentration of traveling sex workers, female business owners who could not stand the excessive competition and unexpected COVID-19 crisis and closed their stores began to work as delirious girls at other stores. In addition, at Chinese-affiliated delicatessens, Chinese women had returned to their home countries in Corona, and the number of enrolled girls had changed to Japanese and Thai.

Despite this, there were some stores where the drop in demand was not so great. At a certain local married women’s delicatessen, many cast members refrained from coming to work, anticipating that they would not be able to make much money because of Corona. Thanks to this, women who continued to come to work at the same pace as before and new cast members who entered the industry because of the COVID-19 crisis were so busy that they could be called “special demand for Corona.

Entering the COVID-19 crisis, people disappeared from love hotel districts across the country, where sex workers and customers are usually seen everywhere. Foreign tourists also stopped playing in delis. Not only has the number of customers decreased, but the age range and quality of the customers has also changed. Before the COVID-19 crisis, the clientele ranged from young people in their 20s to elderly people in their 70s, but with the COVID-19 crisis, the clientele is now mainly in their 40s.

Corona has changed the “distance” between customers and the brothels.

What has increased is the number of “ill-mannered customers” who feel they have “nothing to lose. They were the kind of customers who would unabashedly demand a discount because they were coming at such a time of the year. They do not talk to each other in a short course, but demand all kinds of things, saying, “I paid money for this. There were also some customers who fell in “hard love” with prostitutes, and others who were so bad that they were “banned from the store”. Forced sexual intercourse was commonplace. Many of them were single or divorced.

Normally, the women would let these customers go for the time being, but in the COVID-19 crisis, they would give them their business cards in order to increase the number of nominations.

On the contrary, the ones who stopped coming were the “proper type of customers who can afford it. Those who “ have a family, work for a stable company, and still want to have fun once in a while” were seldom seen anymore, lest their children or wives become infected. These people communicate properly, play nicely, and often do not engage in prohibited or rough behavior. For the prostitutes, the “good customers” were disappearing.

The COVID-19 crisis changed the distance between individual customers and the fuzoku. Some men became enamored with the delicatessen. The COVID-19 crisis made the life plans they had prepared impossible, and there were cases of men who lost sight of their goals and became desperate enough to go there. On the other hand, there were also many customers who had graduated from the sex industry. The COVID-19 crisis has also made them fear for their income and employment, and they can no longer afford to play in the sex clubs. Many men who had lost the habit of playing the sex industry because of the infection never returned to it.

The COVID-19 crisis dealt a major blow to the entire adult entertainment industry. In Tokyo, there were many cases of long-established small-box, store-based health clubs shifting to “deli-help” services. The small size of the stores made it difficult to avoid the “three clandestine encounters” that were loudly encouraged at that time, and customers who wanted to avoid heavy contact stopped coming to the stores.

In a shop-type brothel, a customer inevitably comes into contact with several people, including the male staff at the reception desk and other customers. On the other hand, in the case of delirium, the number of people with whom the customer comes in contact is kept to a minimum, “one woman and one customer. This “discreet play” was also an advantage, and there were cases in which customers of storefront sex clubs flowed into deli-help.

In addition, as stay-home and remote work were encouraged during the declaration of the state of emergency, many people began to spend long hours at home, which increased the need for delirium services that could be enjoyed without going out, and the number of customers who called women at home was increasing. Some men increased their spending on delicatessen as their spending on “eating and drinking” and “traveling” declined.

Some restaurants saw an increase in sales despite the COVID-19 crisis. In Osaka, some men on business trips used delicatessen instead of going to izakaya. Since restaurants were open only until 8:00 p.m. due to shortened hours, more and more people were calling for delirious women.

Court cases over Corona benefits

The government provided rent support benefits and sustainability benefits to businesses that suffered serious damage due to the COVID-19 crisis, such as being forced to close their businesses. However, sex industry businesses were excluded from these payments.

In September 2008, a delicatessen operator in the Kansai region filed a lawsuit against the government and others for damages, claiming that the exclusion of sex industry businesses from the benefits for the new type of coronavirus violated the Constitution. The lawsuit was called the “Sex Workers’ Benefit Lawsuit. The plaintiff was a woman in her 30s. The plaintiffs formed a legal team and even crowdfunded to sue, claiming that the lawsuit violated the Constitution’s provisions on equality under the law and freedom of choice of occupation.

The reasons were that “the sex industry is contrary to the sexual morality shared by the majority of the public, and it is not reasonable for the government to publicly recognize it in the form of a license and to support its continued operation with public funds,” “it is not consistent with other policies or with the understanding of the taxpaying public,” and “the government is allowed to determine the scope of persons eligible for benefits from a policy standpoint. The court ruled that “the State is allowed to determine the scope of persons eligible for benefits from a policy standpoint.

This decision made the world aware that occupational discrimination against the sex industry has not gone away. The COVID-19 crisis was equally devastating to the public, but the government’s help was equally unavailable. Although the trial resulted in a loss, it was a great achievement that the court case brought the prejudice of society and discrimination by the government against the sex industry to the forefront, and made many people think about discrimination against sex workers.

In Part 2, we discuss the unique delicatessen service that was born in the COVID-19 crisis, as well as the current state of the industry and its future prospects.

The “future” of the industry, which overcame the Corona disaster with “Lovedoll Specialty” and “Uber Deli.

References.

A Modern History of Fuzoku,” Akira Ikoma, Seidansha Publico, 2022.

Corona and Fuzoku-Josha (Corona and Fuzoku-Josha), Takaaki Yagisawa, Soshisha, 2021.

Shintai Corona to Fusoku Joshi (The New Corona and the Poor Girls),” Nakamura Atsuhiko, Takarajimasya, 2020.

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