"It really started getting bad about two or three years ago. Those sorts of
establishments just popped up everywhere in what seemed like an instant. There
used to be a noodle restaurant and a hearing aid store, too," a clothes store
operator located in the central part of the Kanagawa Prefecture city of Atsugi
tells Spa!, noting that establishments in the area are now dealing with
completely different types of noodles than had once been the case.
"We're still a regular shopping street, but with all those gaudy signs around,
people aren't coming here to buy anymore. And there's more trouble. And it's
not as safe."
Once bustling Atsugi has in the past few years slumped. Aoyama Gakuin
University used to have a campus there, but it shut up shop in 2003. Showa
Academie Muiscae is still in Atsugi, but has already decided to shift to
neighboring Sagamihara within the year. Department stores Marui and Vivre have
departed. Parco is still there for the moment, but has already shuttered an
annex and the main store is staying only for the current fiscal year. Like the
Parco annex, the area that once housed the Nagasakiya Department Store has been
vacant for years.
About 90 percent of the small retail outlets in central Atsugi's shopping
street have closed down in recent years. In their place swept first a bar
staffed by foreign female "entertainers" and then a swathe of other sex
businesses, so that where once there was a handyman, now there are handjob bars
and rust is turning into red lights.
"An identical phenomenon is taking place in my home town of Anjo in Aichi
Prefecture. One-time shopping strips are becoming just strips. It will start
off with a pink salon (handjob bar). They can use existing floor plans, so it's
easy to start off. Then comes the cabaret clubs, topless pubs and, before you
know it, you've got a thriving red light district on your hands," Akira Ikoma,
managing editor of the adult entertainment magazine Ore no Tabi, says. "In Anjo
there are pink salons operating beside kids' candy stores."
Atsugi and Anjo are hardly exceptions. Middle-sized cities like these across
Japan are seeing the same trend occur. Goi in Chiba Prefecture once had a
healthy selection of small retailers near its train station. Now it has herusu,
the name given to sex services where customers undergo digital or oral
ministrations until they ejaculate.
"It's not like this was a red light district, but all these adult businesses
have opened up here over the past three years," a trader tells Spa! "Most of
the customers are here on visits to the nearby Keiyo Kogyo industrial park or
golfers."
Chitose and Tomakomai in Hokkaido, Aomori's Hirosaki, Utsunomiya in Tochigi,
Tsuruga in Fukui, Kyoto's Maizuru, Kure in Hiroshima, Gunma's Ota, Kokura in
Fukuoka, Mizushima in Okayama ...all these cities share the trait of seeing
their centers gradually filling with adult oriented operations.
Many of these cities becoming mini red light districts also share the common
trait of being supported by a major organization of some sort, which means
their local governments are generally not strapped for cash. But for various
reasons, the small retailers who used to occupy their prime central locations
have all moved out and sex joints moved in, so that where once there was a
fishmonger is now a place selling fishburgers and the butcher who moved away
has been replaced by a meat market with a more carnal flavor.
"Tomakomai has Oji Paper Co., Atsugi's got Hitachi Ltd., Sony Corp. and even
Ricoh Co. Ota is home to Fuji Heavy Industries Co. Goi and Mizushima both have
large industrial parks. All these places becoming red light districts are well
supported by major companies," adult magazine chief Ikoma says. "Other places
have got major operations like nuclear power stations or Maritime Self Defense
Force bases. These are all comparatively wealthy municipalities and they're
turning into sex districts."
Change may be in store though. Revisions to the Urban Planning Law due to be
enacted in November this year aim at re-sparking Japan's struggling smaller
cities, mostly by cracking down on the spread of the large scale retail outlets
springing up on major roadsides throughout the country. Some say they will also
crack down on the spread of central city sex shops. Others, though, say any
attempt at fighting the new order will be futile.
"Major adult business chains are going to go on a rush of new store openings
before the changes to the law come into effect. No type of regulation is going
to revive city center trading now, these places are already dead," Meiji Gakuin
University Assistant Prof. Yoshiro Hattori, an expert on urban planning, tells
Spa! "Trying to revive shopping areas that have declined so far that only sex
businesses can make any money out of them is bordering on the impossible."
Copyright 1999-2007, Mainchi Daily. Used with permission. All rights
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