The Call of Desire: Kabukicho in the Early 2000s

The Call of Desire: Kabukicho in the Early 2000s

A "beauty scout" active in Kabukicho describes his method of leading women into the world of adult entertainment through his own experiences. She ruled by simultaneously inciting anxiety and hope, asserting that girls would always follow her and that momentum was more important than trust. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Kabukicho area saw a rapid expansion of the sex industry, with the spread of aid-seeking and dating in the area. The city was in chaos with gangs and foreign mafias, and scouts functioned as the gatekeepers between the underworld and women; the Parisienne incident in 2002 and the massive cleansing operation in 2003 shook the order of the city, and the tension just prior to the tightening of regulations gives the scouts' narrative a sense of reality. Ultimately, this narrative is not merely an inside story of the underworld, but a testimony of the times, reflecting the anxieties of the Ice Age generation, the desires of the city, and the struggle betwee
n regulation and undergrounding.