<figure id="attachment_463599" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-463599" style="width: 2226px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="a7d27d32"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/aecd33022375bbb9573e52e7446d0410.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-463599" class="wp-caption-text">The &#8220;Ikebukuro Marin Honten&#8221; (left) opened as &#8220;Ikebukuro Prodigal Bath&#8221; (right) in &#8217;24. The &#8220;Ikebukuro Marine Annex&#8221; seen in the back is now &#8220;Everyone&#8217;s Shop&#8221;.</figcaption></figure>
<h3><span class="strongInContent"> The new store is located on the site of the former Marin Group soap shop.</span></h3>
<p> At 9:00 a.m. on March 17, &#8220;I LOVE HIMEJI&#8221; opened in Himeji City, Hyogo Prefecture, as a grand reopening of the former Marin Group soap &#8220;Tulip Himeji,&#8221; which was closed at the end of January.</p>
<p> The website states <span class="strongInContent">, &#8220;We apologize for the inconvenience caused to our customers, but we have evolved into a completely new and attractive store!　（We hope you will experience the new I LOVE HIMEJI!</span> The sudden closure of the store was also mentioned in the greeting message.</p>
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<p> On January 30, more than 20 stores of the Marin Group, which operates soaps all over the country, suddenly closed, causing a stir.</p>
<p> Cast members were only notified on line at night, near the close of business that day. According to the notice, the reason for the closure was said to be financial difficulties, but there were whispers among those involved that the closure was to avoid scout-related exposure.</p>
<p> Soaps that were closed at that time are now being &#8220;revived&#8221; one after another. It is believed that several groups of soap operators have purchased the land and buildings on the former sites and reopened for business.</p>
<p> For example, in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, on February 21, the soap shop &#8220;Torokeyu&#8221; opened on the site of the former &#8220;Ikebukuro Marine Honten&#8221; and the soap shop &#8220;Minnano no Shops&#8221; opened on the site of the former &#8220;Ikebukuro Marine Annex&#8221;; the two stores appear to be sister stores since their store signs are similar in design, but the business entity is unknown.</p>
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<p> In Sendai City, on February 7, &#8220;Jewels,&#8221; a health club specializing in married Mature women, opened in the same location as Marin Group&#8217;s soap &#8220;Tulip Sendai. For unknown reasons, the business was revived by changing its format from a soap to a health club.</p>
<p> Two new soaps opened in Fukui City on March 25, one in Kofu City on April 3, and one in Kumamoto City on April 25, all on the site of former Marin Group stores. Incidentally, the Kumamoto location is being opened by the Esperanza Group, which operates a high-class soap in Nakasu, Fukuoka.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Some &quot;long-established&quot; operators have returned to the high-class line."></div>
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<figure id="attachment_463600" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-463600" style="width: 2048px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="6712ba01"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/7f444dbfaaa0ca7d4fb71a5035fc5cf7.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-463600" class="wp-caption-text">The exterior of &#8220;Ikebukuro Prodigal Bath&#8221; and &#8220;Everybody&#8217;s Shop.&#8221; The design is surprisingly plain and simple, a far cry from the signage when it was part of the Marin Group (March &#8217;26).</figcaption></figure>
<h3><span class="strongInContent"> Some stores to be demolished: &#8230;&#8230;</span></h3>
<p> A number of former Marin Group soaps are coming back to life without changing their names. Barubola,&#8221; a soap in Shinjuku, Tokyo, reopened on March 5 as a &#8220;40-year-old luxury establishment. Barubola had been a mass-market establishment since becoming &#8220;Barubola Marine,&#8221; an affiliate of the Marine Group, but it has returned to its former high-end line.</p>
<p> In Ikebukuro, &#8220;Momo-Li&#8221; reopened on March 7 and &#8220;Wakaba&#8221; on March 28, while &#8220;Ishiwa&#8221; and &#8220;Ishiwa Annex&#8221; reopened on March 25 in Hiroshima City.</p>
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<p> Of the more than 20 Marin Group soaps thus closed, a total of 12 remain soaps (1 in Himeji, 4 in Ikebukuro, 1 in Kofu, 2 in Fukui, 1 in Kumamoto, 1 in Shinjuku, and 2 in Hiroshima), and 1 in Sendai has reopened as a health club. The sudden disappearance of the Marin Group was thought to have put the soap industry in a great crisis, but a large number of stores made a surprisingly quick comeback.</p>
<p> In Ikebukuro, two of the Marin Group&#8217;s stores were put on the market for 400 million yen on a for-sale site immediately after closing, but contrary to expectations, they resumed operations early. Regulations under the Entertainment Establishments Control Law limit the places where storefront entertainment establishments can operate. In particular, stores in good locations in large entertainment districts such as Ikebukuro and Shinjuku are valuable as &#8220;profitable stores,&#8221; and therefore, there is a &#8220;glut&#8221; of such stores.</p>
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<p> While some stores are quickly making a comeback, others are disappearing. A three-story building on Higashi Nibancho Dori, a busy street in the center of Sendai City, where the soap operators Marine Sen Hime (formerly Marine Blue Sen Hime and Imperial Sen Hime) used to operate, was raided by police on January 28 and put on the market two days later for 300 million yen, but it appears that it was not revived. The building was raided by the police on January 28 and sold for 300 million yen two days later, but it appears to have never been revived.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Some soap store groups are expanding into other industries."></div>
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<figure id="attachment_463601" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-463601" style="width: 2048px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="42d86b36"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/9203a538675f5fc8a878ecbd9e98c761.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-463601" class="wp-caption-text">Soap &#8220;Momo Li&#8221; in Ikebukuro. The appearance of the store has been simple since it was under the Marin Group, and has changed little since before the renovation (March &#8217;26).</figcaption></figure>
<h3><span class="strongInContent"> Soap store group with a strong desire to open new outlets</span></h3>
<p> Behind the rapid revival of former Marin Group stores is the high willingness of other soap store groups to open new outlets. New groups are opening one affiliated store after another all over the country.</p>
<p> The Dolce Group, whose two soap operators, &#8220;DOLCE Kawasaki School&#8221; and &#8220;QUALITY&#8221; in Horinouchi, Kawasaki, were busted at the end of last year, has opened a soap, &#8220;Quality plus Yokohama&#8221; in Akebono-cho, Yokohama, and a soap, &#8220;CLASS Kawasaki School&#8221; in Horinouchi, Kawasaki, on March 7. The company opened the &#8220;CLASS Kawasaki School&#8221; soap in Horinouchi, Kawasaki, on March 7, 2012.</p>
<p> Revolution Group,&#8221; which operates a variety of soaps in the Tokyo metropolitan area, including school-style and bunny-girl cosplay soaps, also opened the grand opening of the soap &#8220;Kawasaki Bijo Revolution&#8221; in Horinouchi, Kawasaki, on February 17.</p>
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<p> Some soap store groups are opening new stores in other types of adult entertainment businesses.</p>
<p> The &#8220;Happiness Group,&#8221; which currently operates the Ikebukuro soap &#8220;Momo Li,&#8221; which was part of the Marin Group, as well as 16 other budget soaps nationwide, opened a store-type hand job specialty store &#8220;Matsuyama 2980 yen (nyankyupa)&#8221; in Dogo Onsen, Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture on March 3, 2012. This is the second hand job store in the area, following &#8220;2980 Yen&#8221; in Nakasu, Fukuoka.</p>
<p> Since its establishment in 2009, the group has continued to make rapid progress with its high quality of its licensed girls and cost-conscious soap operators, and has grown steadily even after overcoming the COVID-19 crisis. The fact that the group has now opened extremely inexpensive hand job parlors in multiple areas suggests that the world has changed.</p>
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<p> Soap store groups, ranging from long-established establishments to newcomers, are becoming more and more diverse with each passing day. While some groups offer a wide variety of soaps with distinctive characteristics, such as ultra high-class, ladies in their thirties, micro bikini, and short-hour, very inexpensive soaps, others offer many similar soaps based on the concept of &#8220;idols. It can be said that these groups &#8220;filled the hole created by the disappearance of the Marin Group&#8221; as if in a battle for position.</p>
<p> The simultaneous closure of the Marin Group&#8217;s soaps caused a great deal of damage to the industry. However, the fact that several of them reopened within a short period of only one or two months reminded us of the &#8220;resilience&#8221; of the sex industry.</p>
<p> Now that the backstreets of Osaka, with the exception of the five major new areas, have been almost completely destroyed, the demand for soaps that provide thick and rich services is surely great, which means that they are still needed by a large number of people. With their amazing tenacity, they are sure to weather various crises in the future.</p>

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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" [Image] Revived &quot;Old Marine Group&quot; soap store"></div>
<figure id="attachment_463602" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-463602" style="width: 1536px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="973b402d"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/201310450757457de2339511773603fa.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-463602" class="wp-caption-text">Soap &#8220;Barbora Marine&#8221; in Shinjuku in &#8217;24. It had a flamboyant appearance that was a surprisingly large gap from the simplicity of today.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_463605" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-463605" style="width: 1536px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="2d9e9ab2"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/279ae658d0db4378cd2d38d97eb632f8.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-463605" class="wp-caption-text"> Barubola&#8221; soap in Shinjuku. The signboard has the same simple design as that of &#8220;Ikebukuro Prodigal Bath (Torokeyu)&#8221; and &#8220;Minnano no Shops&#8221; in Ikebukuro. There was a sign for foreign customers in front of the building entrance (March &#8217;26).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_463606" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-463606" style="width: 2048px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="f31e3a84"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/45c334bdcdddbb283b3493d80422ae1e.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-463606" class="wp-caption-text"> Ikebukuro&#8217;s soap &#8220;Wakaba&#8221; in &#8217;24. Many colorful signs were hung on the exterior of the store.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_463607" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-463607" style="width: 2048px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="50e94f37"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/c341d1fa2ba34bb49bb11eb9c1bcd0d9.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-463607" class="wp-caption-text"> The current &#8220;Wakaba&#8221;. The number of signboards has decreased compared to when it was affiliated with the Marin Group (March &#8217;26).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_463608" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-463608" style="width: 1536px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="586258ee"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/3508db0eed3e95b90cc4a838730a5457.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-463608" class="wp-caption-text"> Signboard of &#8220;Marin Ikebukuro Kitaguchi Ekimae&#8221; soap shop in Ikebukuro. The word &#8220;Marin&#8221; that used to be on the sign has been removed. As of the end of March 2014, there is no information on the reopening of this store.</figcaption></figure>


 Akira Ikoma

 On January 30, "Marin Group" shocked the public by suddenly closing more than 20 soap operators nationwide and disappearing. However, within a month or two, new ones opened one after another on the former sites. What is the background?

It’s already back… Karakuri, a new soap opening one after another on the site of the Marin Group, which disappeared in January.

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