A City of Light and Shadow Signs: Red-light Yoshiwara and the Aesthetics of the Sex Industry: The 1950s and 1960s

A City of Light and Shadow Signs: Red-light Yoshiwara and the Aesthetics of the Sex Industry: The 1950s and 1960s

Postwar Japanese society, while recovering from the scorched earth, still harbored a world of "survivors" on the other side of the city. The most symbolic example of this was Yoshiwara, Tokyo. This town, which had carried the tradition of brothels since the Edo period, was reorganized as a "special drinking area" by the state and became a red-light district where prostitution was practically tacitly permitted, even amid the chaos of the immediate postwar period.

During this period, before the Anti-Prostitution Law (enacted in 1956 and enforced in 1958), Yoshiwara was both glamorous and seedy. Colorful neon lights and "back-door business" signs lined the alleys that could not be seen from the main street. These stores, which ostensibly displayed signs for "coffee shops," "inns," and "massage parlors," but in reality engaged in prostitution, were cleverly designed to evade the eyes of the law.

For example, the signage would indicate "XX-chan's store" by writing the name of the woman on the signboard, or the design of the store would suggest to visitors the nature of the business with pink neon lights, round designs, curtains, etc., while avoiding "direct" language. Also, a "double-layered nameplate," which looks like an ordinary beauty parlor during the day, appears as a different sign at night. Such devices were the survival wisdom of those who lived on the border between the underground world and the legal world.

This culture was also deeply connected to regional characteristics. Yoshiwara, in particular, was a symbol of "tradition and prestige," and while the measures taken against infectious diseases such as syphilis and tuberculosis were ostensibly sanitary, behind the scenes, bribing doctors and falsifying medical reports were rampant. The red line took in women from rural areas, war orphans, and the impoverished as labor force, creating a place for them on the urban periphery, but it was also a meeting point for those cut off from the state.

Yoshiwara was nominally "cleansed" by the enforcement of the Anti-Prostitution Law in 1958. However, the sex business remained, changing its form, this time transforming itself into "soapland" and "Turkish bath" (the names used at the time). The signs were also changed to more abstract and fantastical words, such as "Ai no Yakata" and "Yume no Shizuku," which spoke to the imagination of the customers.

Thus, Yoshiwara and its signboard culture of the red-light district was an "underground representation" of a city where law and sex, life and desire intersected, and those who lived through it embodied "another wisdom" that did not appear on the surface of the city.