What is the “Costume-Free Imeclub” Increased by the COVID-19 crisis?　Further Evolution in the Present and Future

What is an “Imekura” without costumes?

In his series “The Cultural History of the Imekura,” sex journalist Akira Ikoma explores the history of various elaborate image plays, which is also the “cultural history of fuzoku. In the final installment, “Part 2,” he examines the future of “i-mekura,” where even the COVID-19 crisis has evolved.

Yankee girls”, “special effects heroines”, “naked coats”….

In the ’20s, image play evolved even further. Increasingly, amid the COVID-19 crisis, were “sex clubs without costumes. There had always been sex clubs with women with special attributes, such as “a married woman in debt” or “a girl who has just moved to Tokyo,” but this became even more prominent.

In April 2008, comedian Takashi Okamura caused a firestorm when he said on the radio, “When Corona opens, beautiful women will be working as prostitutes. As if this statement became a reality, in June 2008, a new brothel appeared in Gotanda, Tokyo, which attracted only “women who are in trouble due to the COVID-19 crisis. The “Corona Depression Girls,” a delicatessen that opened in Gotanda, Tokyo, was the ultimate example of a “sex club without costumes,” claiming that “the women are waiting for your help.

Customers played under the guise of “supporting women” and felt as if they were helping others. It was the emergence of a “new type of ‘imekura'” that took the social issues of the time as a straightforward concept and consumed them as a story.

Around the same time, in Namba, Osaka, a new hotel service called “Yami Kano” opened, featuring only “sickly-cute” beauties. opened in Namba, Osaka. It was a novel experience to play with cute, pampered, but slightly sickly menhera women.

In Ikebukuro, Tokyo, a new hotel helper and delicatessen called “Adult Women’s Golf Club” has appeared. The celebrity atmosphere of golf successfully appealed to the “non-costumed image play” that brought together women with the special attribute of “high-class adult women.

Innovative was “Our Sex Processing Factory in Uguisudani,” a delicatessen in Uguisudani, Tokyo, that used a factory as its motif and introduced its enrolled girls in work clothes. The concept was that customers were turned into “products” placed on a conveyor belt and received sexual services from female workers in a “simple work flow” style, a concept that overturned the conventional wisdom of the industry. This was a breakthrough in the industry.

Fuzoku, in which a man and a woman get naked and make skin-to-skin contact with each other, is representative of analog services, and the attraction has long been that the experience is similar to that of two lovers. This store, however, made a point of eliminating such human interaction. This concept is probably not unrelated to the fact that the COVID-19 crisis encouraged people to reduce their contact with others. As with the factory, the fee was short and extremely inexpensive, starting at 4,510 yen for 30 minutes. The influence of neoliberalism, which prioritized profit and efficiency, extended even to the immersion clubs.

Some stores even took advantage of the COVID-19 crisis by requiring their customers to wear masks. A delicatessen in Kinshicho, Tokyo, called “Take it off immediately! Kinshicho delicatessen,” a delicatessen in Kinshicho, Tokyo, offered immediate play with a woman wearing nothing but a mask. The nudity and the mask were recognized as a “costume.

Japanese-style restaurants are in vogue due to the increase in inbound tourists.

After the COVID-19 crisis, more and more adult entertainment establishments are incorporating Japanese-style cosplay with an eye to the rapidly recovering inbound market. These include “Oiran Yukaku,” a health club in Shinsakae, Nagoya, where you can play with women dressed in the finest silk fabrics, and “Otohime Banquet,” the first soap shop specializing in kimono at Kaike Onsen Hot Springs in Tottori. These two establishments are still in business.

Tobita Shinchi in Osaka also attracts large numbers of inbound visitors every day, and the number of women in kimonos at ryotei restaurants has been increasing noticeably in recent years. Many of them wear yukata in summer and kimonos in winter, and from the customers’ point of view, it is as if they are watching a fashion show of sexy kimono for each season.

In Tobita Shinchi over the past few years, some women have appeared in the uniforms of the Hanshin Tigers, a popular local baseball team that won the Japan championship in ’23, and of the Dodgers, the team of Shohei Otani, who was frequently featured in the media for his 50-50 achievement. The costumes worn by prostitutes are a reflection of the current trends in the world, and the sex industry is a “mirror of society.

School-style Soaps Combine with the Boom in Suishikatsu

The current craze is for “imekura” soap operas, which give the sensation of spending time in a lover’s room. These are establishments where “you can play with your ‘ideal girlfriend'” and “you can experience fantasies and desires that you could never ask your real girlfriend to do.

Until now, most of the girls in the “ikebukura” scene have been nurses, female office workers, and bunny girls dressed in specific costumes. However, “Amateur Image SOAP Kanojo Kankan Utsunomiya Honkan” in Utsunomiya, Tochigi, and “New Sensory Love Soap: If She Were a ____… Fukuoka Nakasu Honten” in Nakasu, Fukuoka, have gained a large following by offering “image play with a girlfriend wearing everyday clothes. In other words, for many men, “amateur girlfriends” are now the object of extraordinary longing.

On the other hand, the overwhelming popularity of the school type is still the same as it has always been. School uniforms are the royal road to sex cosplay, and many stores in all types of businesses use them, and the trend has spread to the countryside. In addition to the standard sailor uniforms, blazers, school swimsuits, and gym uniforms, some stores even offer costumes for club activities such as tennis, soccer, and track and field.

Among these, the most popular type of soap in recent years has been the school-style soap, which combines the elements of “idol,” “cosplay,” and “amateur” because of the popularity of “guessing activities” for underground idols and influencers on social networking sites, triggered by the COVID-19 crisis.

The “Honey Collection” in Yoshiwara, Tokyo, “After School” in Horinouchi, Kawasaki, “Idol Labo” in Kanazuen, Gifu, and “Zenryoku! Otome-zaka 46” in Furumachi, Niigata, and others, all of which advertise their services by having their cast members dress up in school uniform idol costumes, indicating the actual age of the girls, and enrolling only girls in their twenties.

Predicting the Future of Imekura

The tendency to seek out situations for play has increased over time, regardless of the genre of the sex establishment. The increase in the number of “togai” (togai means “to stray from the norm”) establishments has also reflected the intensifying competition to attract customers. In order to respond to the various desires of customers and to weather the economic downturn, image play became more and more radical.

When Shintaro Ishihara, then Governor of Tokyo, attempted to ban the “rice-cake” clubs during the cleanup campaign of ’03-’05, many people voiced their opposition, saying, “I don’t want to have the right to dream taken away from me. However, not only did the “i-mekura” continue to exist in a different form, but they also evolved further, surprising the public with their unique concept.

From the 19th century brothels in Paris, where exotic image rooms were very popular, to the present, the supply and demand of fantasy play continues to transcend time and space. New imekura spaces that satisfy people’s phantasms (fantasies and illusions that serve as a type of enjoyment and an indicator of desire for personal satisfaction) will continue to appear in the future. The VR sex industry, which has become popular in recent years, is one such example. The arrival of the “new age of image play” is something to look forward to.

References
Ore no Tabi” (My Journey) (sex industry information magazine), Million Publishing (from December 2018, Taiyo Publishing), 2015-2019.
Fuzoku no genzai shishi (The Modern History of Fuzoku), Akira Ikoma, Seidansha Publico, 2022.
Erotic Japon, Agnes Giard, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2010.
In addition, numerous other books and online media were referenced.