Keihan Chronicle

When walking along the street anyone finds some magazine stand with something like "Take for Free" written on it, it is natural to take a glance, especially when the covers have an eye-catching design featuring something like cute looking girls.

Last weekend I was walking near the Tôji temple in Kyoto when I found one of these stands. Without paying much attention, I took a couple of magazines out of curiosity, since some of their names (like "Collon") sounded just funny. When I took a few steps away I noticed the "18" symbol in the cover. "That's strange..." I thought, "Wait, porn for free in the street!?" that's impossible...


Out of prudence I waited to get home to take a look (they were wrapped with plastic) to see what the hell were they about, and I finally understood. One of the magazines stated "Superwork-magazine Collon for girls" as a clue. Then, a quick look was enough to know that the content of these magazines (almost the same in both) was mainly about job offers in all kind of night clubs ranging from waitresses to almost prostitution, but mainly focusing to the hostess world as depicted in the descriptions below.

Besides of the nature of these jobs, what made me think the most was the easy access to this kind of publication. I found these copies in a quiet street in Kyoto, but then I saw more in some different places, among which was a small bookshop near to the Gaidai campus. This may lead to think how many young women and students choose this way to cover their expenses and to what extent is this good for the society.

A parallel can be drawn between hostess clubs and pachinko parlors. Even though the latter are more numerous, both have an important presence in adult entertainment in Japan and both challenge the legal bounds, since gambling as well as prostitution are forbidden by law. Beyond the moral discussion that this subject can lead to, I think that the most important thing to be taken into account is the position that Japanese society and its main powers adopt towards this tendency in the entertainment world. Does it help people (workers and costumers) to fulfill their needs and hopes, or rather make them get inside a spyral of dispair as it was depicted in the aforementioned documentary? This certainly needs lots of discussion that a single blog post can't provide...