<figure id="attachment_462023" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462023" style="width: 1128px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="12e085e1"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/72dfbcc4a780bac2a254c3d3cd9166bf.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462023" class="wp-caption-text">Soap operas with anonymous names, &#8220;Office Lady Ako. and &#8220;Married Woman Ako. (Chiba, &#8217;18). The &#8220;amateurishness&#8221; of the cast members was created (Chiba, &#8217;18).</figcaption></figure>
<p> Image play in brothels is also a &#8220;cultural history of fuzoku&#8221; that reflects the times as if it were a mirror. In this final part of a series of articles by sex industry journalist Akira Ikoma, he traces the history of image play in the sex industry. In the late 1910s, amidst fierce competition with other establishments, the &#8220;i-mekura&#8221; clubs began to offer more and more niche and outlandish ideas. On the other hand, the &#8220;royal road&#8221; of cosplay, bunny girl cosplay, also became popular&#8230;</p>
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<h3><span class="strongInContent"> A succession of outlandish concept &#8220;theme clubs&#8221; began to appear.</span></h3>
<p> In the mid-1990s, a number of &#8220;i-mekura&#8221; clubs began to emerge, each with a distinct personality that differentiates it from the others. This trend was particularly noticeable in the traveling sex industry. At that time, the traveling sex industry, such as &#8220;deli-hel,&#8221; was saturated. It was said that <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;even if 10 to 20 stores opened every month in Kabukicho, most of them would go out of business.</span> In order to survive the fierce competition to attract customers, one way to compete was to come up with an original concept.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent">The first time I saw a restaurant in the area, I was greeted with the spirited greeting, &#8220;Yoroshiku!</span> appeared in the Uguisudani, Ueno, and Kinshicho areas of Tokyo, taking advantage of the Showa-era retro boom. It became a topic of conversation that the girls could &#8220;fight with&#8221; women dressed in &#8220;keraman&#8221; style tokkusatsu (special effects) outfits.</p>
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<p> The &#8220;Super Heroine of Defeat,&#8221; a delicatessen in Gotanda, Tokyo, where women dress up as noble heroines in tokusatsu costumes, also gained a reputation. The customer becomes the villain and defeats the absolutely invincible two-dimensional heroine. Such a sense of immorality was the main attraction, and since its establishment, it has been extremely popular among middle-aged otaku men.</p>
<p> Some customers brought their own DVDs of anime to <span class="strongInContent">recreate their favorite scenes</span>, while others brought original character costumes of their own design to play the villain. According to a female cast member, <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;If you laugh even a little, you&#8217;re out.</span> It&#8217; <span class="strongInContent">s important to be the character.</span></p>
<p> The &#8220;Defeat Series&#8221; three restaurants are still popular today, with sister restaurants &#8220;Defeat Women&#8217;s Wrestling&#8221; and &#8220;Defeat JoOusama&#8221;. They are all excellent concepts, and their popularity speaks to the depth of the popularity of the &#8220;imekura.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Naked under the coat"></div>
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<figure id="attachment_462024" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462024" style="width: 1536px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="9023a8ad"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/6e4f2388f71bad37f5c826ed6109b0bf.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462024" class="wp-caption-text">Prison Health: Eicho Women&#8217;s Prison Prison&#8221; in Sakaimachi, Chiba, has a dangerous atmosphere. The barbed wire fence above the sign and the wire mesh next to the door give it a prison-like atmosphere.</figcaption></figure>
<h3><span class="strongInContent"> A delicatessen where women pretend to be robots</span></h3>
<p> Cast members arrive dressed in one-piece dresses in the summer and completely naked under coats in the winter, and begin their services immediately at the door. This was the ultimate form of &#8220;instant play,&#8221; or &#8220;instant nudity. Hotel-help agencies that adopted this style, such as Funabashi, Chiba&#8217;s &#8220;Zenkaku Special: An unbearable onna begs for it,&#8221; were also in vogue.</p>
<p> A cast member of the &#8220;Naked Goddess&#8221; hotell in Ueno, Tokyo, told the following story about the &#8220;immediate and complete nudity.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I was worried about what would happen if they found out I was completely naked, and my heart was racing as I worried about the eyes of the people around me while I was coming from the store to the hotel. By the time I arrived, my body was on fire because of that nervousness.</span></p>
<p> The &#8220;instant nudity&#8221; was not a cosplay-like &#8220;impersonation,&#8221; but rather an imaginary play in which the cast members actually put their bodies on the line.</p>
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<p> Robot Delhi Hell,&#8221; a delicatessen in Shinjuku, Tokyo, where &#8220;the cast members become robots and the customers control them with a remote control,&#8221; was particularly unique. The customer was able to set the cast members not to talk, so that the customer could play with them as he or she wished. Some men dressed their daughters in their high school uniforms at home, while others waited in school swimsuits. Because the partner &#8220;doesn&#8217;t talk,&#8221; it was possible to do things that might be called &#8220;creepy. Since there was no need to speak, there were many foreign customers, and the vice president of an African country once visited the club.</p>
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<p> Until then, the new sex industry was basically based on the &#8220;plus&#8221; concept. They developed new techniques, elaborate playrooms, and costumes. However, &#8220;Robot Delhi Hell&#8221; was successful in its &#8220;negative&#8221; concept of &#8220;eliminating conversation.</p>
<p> Perhaps it was a service that matched the needs of a world in which the Internet and social networking services have become pervasive, and people who are uncomfortable with face-to-face communication have increased.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Also very popular at girls&#39; bars"></div>
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<figure id="attachment_462025" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462025" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="c8bab8a6"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/0e79bf323ad06b71e631f6cfd41da39c-rotated.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462025" class="wp-caption-text">The &#8220;Dominatrix Bunny Girl Wakayama&#8221; soap in Shin-Zaikacho, Wakayama.&#8217; By the end of the decade, bunny-girl soaps were simultaneously appearing all over the country, even penetrating into rural areas such as Niigata, Utsunomiya, Shimonoseki, Takamatsu, and Kumamoto (&#8217;18).</figcaption></figure>
<h3><span class="strongInContent"> Bunny girls became popular nationwide.</span></h3>
<p> While many stores with a togai-ish flair sprang up one after another, stores specializing in &#8220;bunny girl cosplay,&#8221; which could be called the &#8220;royal road to cosplay,&#8221; became popular nationwide regardless of the type of business, including soaps, health clubs, and delicatessen services. Even girls&#8217; bars became popular, especially those that offered a glimpse of the bunny in the store from the street. Bunny costumes had a more obvious visual sex appeal than nurse uniforms or school uniforms, and were better able to attract customers.</p>
<p> The bunny girl costume was first conceived as a waitress costume for the Playboy Club, an exclusive club that opened in 1960 in conjunction with the American adult magazine PLAYBOY. The reason for using a rabbit as a motif is said to be because of the association of the rabbit with the image of a creature in heat throughout the year, a metaphor for women being &#8220;always ready to accept a man.</p>
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<p> Since the body line is emphasized, it is preferable that women who wear them have a certain level of body shape. Many women listed it as <span class="strongInContent">a costume they would like to wear at least once</span>, and it was also favorably accepted by prostitutes <span class="strongInContent">, who thought the bunny ears and tail were cute</span>.</p>
<p> A clerk at a bunny soap store in the Kansai region at the time had the following to say.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;&#8216;In bunny girls&#8217; bars, you can look at them and talk with them, but basically you can&#8217;t touch them. But in a brothel, you can touch them as much as you like, which makes me happy.</span></p>
<p> Also, <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;Older people often visit us</span>,&#8221; she said. It seems that the older customers liked the fact that they could get close to a woman in a costume that has long been associated with the image of a &#8220;nice girl&#8221; or a &#8220;high class girl&#8221;.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Welcoming guests in hot pants"></div>
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<figure id="attachment_462026" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462026" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="68e13299"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/045e06f59aacd831e602df3087845709.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462026" class="wp-caption-text">Ponytail,&#8221; a soap in Shin-Zaikacho, Wakayama, where mini pants are the main costume. A woman with her hair in a ponytail greeted us in a tank top and hot pants in &#8217;18.</figcaption></figure>
<h3><span class="strongInContent"> Soaps and Pinsaro also became &#8220;themed&#8221; by store.</span></h3>
<p> In the late 1960s, many soap operators, which by their nature were conservative, began to offer image-oriented performances. The first to adopt the shocking micro bikini costume was &#8220;Proportion&#8221; in Horinouchi, Kawasaki, which specialized in big-breasted girls with E-cups or larger.</p>
<p> In Sakaecho, Chiba, &#8220;Office Lady Ako. Married Woman Ako. The anonymous names of the cast members, &#8220;Office Lady Ako&#8221; and &#8220;Married Woman Ako,&#8221; became popular in Sakae-machi, Chiba. The name of one of the girls in &#8220;Office Lady Ako&#8221; was &#8220;Riko, 32, who works in the beauty industry. Riko, 32, works in the beauty industry,&#8221; and &#8220;Miko, 26, a nursery school teacher,&#8221; etc. in &#8220;OL Ako,&#8221; and &#8220;Married Woman Ako. introduced their members on their website as &#8220;Miko, 37, lives in Meguro-ku, Tokyo&#8221; and &#8220;Soko, 31, lives in Odawara City, Japan. Photos of the girls at work and outdoors are included, emphasizing the amateurish nature of the girls. In a manner of speaking, it can be said that this is a play on the image of &#8220;amateur women.</p>
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<p> In the Kansai region, soap operators have begun to use minipants as their main costume. At &#8220;Ponytail&#8221; in Shin-Zaikacho, Wakayama, a woman with her hair in a ponytail greeted the customers in a tank top and hot pants, and her super-mini denim shorts were so tight that not only her thighs but also her buttocks were sticking out. Also, at &#8220;Eternal&#8221; in Fukuhara, Kobe, a woman greeted us in a pair of shorts and a no-bra shirt.</p>
<p> The revealing minipants were not only popular with men, who <span class="strongInContent">said, &#8220;I can&#8217;t stop looking at my thighs,&#8221;</span> but also with women, <span class="strongInContent">who said, &#8220;They look cute,&#8221; and &#8220;They make my legs look longer</span>. This costume, which looks like a prostitute&#8217;s everyday clothes, used to be handled mainly by stores specializing in leg fetish, but it was novel that soap operators adopted it as a uniform. Ponytail&#8221; is now a school-style soap.</p>
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<p> The pin salon business has also become increasingly segmented in terms of concept, and the densely populated Gotanda area of Tokyo is now home to a variety of unique establishments. The two are still going strong today. The increase in the number of themed specialty stores can be seen in all types of industries. All industries face fierce competition for survival, and in order to survive, it is necessary to differentiate oneself from other stores.</p>

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<p> In Part 2, we will discuss the future of image play and the &#8220;Costume-less sex clubs,&#8221; which have persistently progressed despite the COVID-19 crisis.</p>
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<p><a href="https://friday.kodansha.co.jp/article/462052"> Part 2: &#8220;Costume-free sex clubs&#8221; that have increased due to the COVID-19 crisis.　The Present &amp; Future of Further Evolution</a></p>
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<p> Reference <br>
Ore no Tabi&#8221; (My Journey) (sex industry information magazine), Million Publishing (Taiyo Publishing from December 2018), 2015-2019. <br>
The Modern History of Fuzoku, Akira Ikoma, Seidansha Publico, 2022 <br>
Erotic Japon, Agnes Giard, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2010. <br>
In addition, numerous other books and online media were referenced.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" [Image] Sex stores, etc., which adopted cosplay one after another."></div>
<figure id="attachment_462029" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462029" style="width: 1536px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="5fcdd209"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/f406a5c03fe60ff53c70fba8c88d24eb.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462029" class="wp-caption-text">Signboard of a con cafe in Akihabara, Tokyo. Bunny girls were a popular costume for all kinds of businesses, from con cafes to soap operas (&#8217;23).</figcaption></figure>

<figure id="attachment_462030" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462030" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="e5c45c16"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/6875787ed34d7d6a3b571c394916b9ef-rotated.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462030" class="wp-caption-text"> Soaps and other establishments also began to use a variety of costumes to express their individuality. Micro bikini costume at &#8220;Proportion&#8221; in Horinouchi, Kawasaki (in &#8217;24).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_462031" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462031" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="6ef1d799"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/5829312dd64ac10b83dd5dd7805b167e-rotated.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462031" class="wp-caption-text"> At &#8220;Animal Paradise&#8221; pin salon in Gotanda, Tokyo, women in animal costumes served customers in a jungle-like interior (2005).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_462027" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462027" style="width: 2048px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="614bec1c"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/fa0252eb6a2c80f82e25b3a551a28b7f.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462027" class="wp-caption-text"> A woman in a nurse costume. Many male customers want to be healed by nurses (Sendai, &#8217;02).</figcaption></figure>


 Akira Ikoma

 This is the final installment of a series of articles by sex journalist Akira Ikoma on the history of image play, which can also be called "the cultural history of fuzoku. In Part 1, we will look at the history of image play in the late '10s, when the number of establishments offering unique image play increased, and bunny girls also became popular.

 The Cultural History of the Imekura (Part 4)

Yankee girls&#8221;, &#8220;special effects heroines&#8221;, &#8220;naked coats&#8221;&#8230; The late &#8217;10s saw the appearance of many establishments with a &#8220;togai&#8221; flair.

Yankee girls”, “special effects heroines”, “naked coats”… The late ’10s saw the appearance of many establishments with a “togai” flair.

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