No-pan kissa

No-pan kissa (ノーパン喫茶, literally "no-panties cafe") is a Japanese term for cafes where the waitresses wear short skirts with no underwear. The floors, or sections of the floor, are often mirrored.

Contents

Concept

Customers order drinks and snacks and may look at, but not generally touch, the staff.[1] The shops otherwise look like normal coffee shops, rather than sex establishments, although they charge around four times as much for coffee (typically 700 yen for a coffee). Previously most sex establishments had been establishments such as soaplands and pink salons with professional prostitutes. No-pan kissa were a popular employment choice amongst some women because they paid well and generally required little sexual contact with the customers. Many employees were college students who were earning extra money.

History

The first one to open was in Osaka in 1980 [2] and then in Higashi-Nagasaki in Tokyo. Initially all of them were in remote areas outside the traditional entertainment districts. Within a year large numbers had opened in many more places, such as major railway stations.[3]

In the peak of the boom in these shops in the 1980s, many started to have topless or bottomless waitresses. However, at this point the number of such shops started to decline rapidly.

A later development in certain no-pan kissa was the creation of small private rooms where the staff provided sexual services like oral sex or masturbation.

Eventually such coffee shops gave way to fashion health clubs, and few, if any, remain. The New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act came into force on February 13, 1985, which further restricted the sex industry, and protected the more traditional businesses.

Variations

In addition to no-pan kissa, there have also been no-pan shabu-shabu,[4] and no-pan yakiniku restaurants; and no-pan karaoke.[1][5]

References

  1. ^ a b Allison, Anne (1994). Nightwork: sexuality, pleasure, and corporate masculinity in a Tokyo hostess club. University of Chicago Press. pp. 131–132. ISBN 0226014878. 
  2. ^ Buruma, Ian (1984). Behind the mask: on sexual demons, sacred mothers, transvestites, gangsters, drifters and other Japanese cultural heroes. Pantheon Books. p. 111. ISBN 0394537750. 
  3. ^ Bestor, Theodore C. (1989). Neighborhood Tokyo. Studies of the East Asian Institute. Stanford University Press. p. 42. ISBN 0804717974. 
  4. ^ "Ministry officials 'demanded' sex club entertainment". New Sunday Times. 28 January 1998. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=m-YVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-RQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5251,3800843&dq=no-pan+shabu+shabu&hl=en. Retrieved 2012-12-28. 
  5. ^ Allison, Anne (2000). Permitted and prohibited desires: mothers, comics, and censorship in Japan. University of California Press. p. 170. ISBN 0520219902. 
Types of coffeehouses