This is one of those books that I would have immediately grabbed from the shelf and raced to the register with if I had spotted it in a bookstore. I mean, look at that cover! That’s one wide-open beaver, as Kurt Vonnegut would have said. And then the title! Literally translated: “An Introduction to Strip Clubs for Women”! Or maybe more artfully rendered as “A Girls’ Primer of the World of Strip Clubs”. At any rate, this book wants to tell women about what lies behind the doors of these sexy, sexy venues, and I am always here for de-stigmatizing any kind of sex work. Sex work is work!
But alas, I, like every other non-Japanese person on the planet basically, cannot enter that mystical land of bookstores, so I did not encounter this semi-smutty treat on the shelves of my favourite shop, but rather at a virtual event put on by one of the great indies in the city of Tokyo, Taco Ché. I was still struck by the book in the same way as I would have been in the real world, except instead of racing to the register, I emailed a friend and asked her to pick it up and send it to me. However, not even the powerful promptness of Japan Post can overcome the global delays brought about by a pandemic, and this sweet volume languished in an office somewhere, awaiting its turn to jump on a plane and fly straight into my arms. Eventually, the book made it through the trials of the global postal system to at last allow my brain to battle it, and honestly I can’t ask for anything more than that (except an end to the pandemic).
Like our author/slash narrator, I am a woman who has enjoyed strip clubs. Many years ago, when I was still very much a Young, I lived down the street from a sex district in a city in the extremely frozen tundras of the north. Please do not picture anything as inviting as the red windows of Amsterdam. Think more strip mall with sex toy shops, adult video rentals, a couple bars, a shitty and overpriced convenience store, and a dive-y strip club (across the street from the strip mall). To complete the picture, please add in young white men driving trucks, which were both absurd and unnecessary for the urban environment, shouting drunkenly out open windows. Yes, my time in this neighbourhood featured the most shouts of “fucking [slur for gay men redacted]” I’ve ever received because I had short hair and wore baggy clothes, so that apparently turned me into a gay man? It was confusing, but I try not to consider the thought processes of bigots too carefully. Continue reading “Onna no Ko no tame no Strip Gekijo Nyumon: Nao Korin” →