Shadow-eating Men: Portraits of Pimps and Thugs of the Red-light District, 1950s and 1960s

Shadow-eating Men: Portraits of Pimps and Thugs of the Red-light District, 1950s and 1960s

In the red-light district of Yoshiwara, Suzaki, and Hato no Machi in Tokyo in the 1950s, the shadows of young men huddled behind the prostitutes. They were those who did not have the institutional protection of society, could not enter the labor market, or left it of their own volition. They were commonly called "hoodlums" or "pimps.

They were never members of the organized underworld. Rather, they were a loose underground existence, living in one-on-one relationships with the women of the brothels. They depended on the women for their earnings, sometimes dominating them with violence, and sometimes skilled in the art of "being loved," as they did manual labor for day jobs or chores at the gambling hall. They survived by entering into the prostitutes' affections instead of leaving their physical food and clothing to the women.

These relationships were not mere exploitation, but oscillated between dependence and codependence, power and affection. The women were both providers and guarantors of the pimp's existence. For many of these prostitutes - orphans, unwed mothers, the poor - the "pimp" was also an alternative to the private community in the city.

On the other hand, the system did not recognize these ambiguous relationships. Their existence was subject to scrutiny as "vagrants" and "juvenile delinquents," a situation that became even harsher after the 1958 Anti-Prostitution Law came into effect. Along with prostitutes who lost their jobs, many of the pimps disappeared from the streets, some were absorbed into gangs, and others sank to the bottom of the city.

Thus, while the terms "pimp" and "hoodlum" were consumed as objects of scorn and satire, the activities of men and women who once shared a light in a corner of the city soon disappeared from the institutional record.