Nobuyoshi Araki
Tokyo "entertainment centers" in the early 1980s photographed by Araki, Â It started in 1978 with an ordinary coffee shop near Kyoto whose waitresses famously wore no panties under their miniskirts and see-through pantyhose. As word began to spread, similar establishments popped up across the country. Men lined up outside these cafÃ©s waiting to pay three times the usual cost for coffee served by a panty-free young woman, hoping to catch a fortuitous glimpse. Within a few years, a new craze took hold: the no-panties "massage" parlor. Competition for customers led these new types of businesses to offer an increasingly bizarre range of services: fondling clients through holes in coffins whilst they lie naked inside playing dead, interiors catering to commuter-train fetishists, young virgin role-playing, etc. Amongst these many destinations was a Tokyo club called Lucky Hole. Here, the premise was ridiculously simple: clients stood on one side of a plywood partition, a hostess on the other; in between them was simply a hole big enough for a certain part of the male anatomy to pass through., Nobuyoshi Araki was a frequent visitor to the sex clubs of Tokyo's Shinjuku neighborhood, and he photographed them profusely until the golden age of Japan's sex industry came to a screeching halt inÂ February 1985, with the enactment of the New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act.Â In over 800 photos, ,Tokyo Lucky Hole, documents the free-for-all spirit of those clubs via Araki's lens.
Art,Photography,Art,Art and Photography,Adult Fiction,Erotica,Cultural,Japan,Nonfiction,Asian Literature,Japanese Literature
Araki: Tokyo Lucky Hole