Nobuyoshi Araki - ARAKI TOKYO LUCKY HOLE - 2012

It began in 1978 with an ordinary coffee shop near Kyoto. Reports spread that the waitresses did not wear panties under their miniskirts. Similar establishments appeared across the country. Men queued outside to pay three times the usual coffee price just to be served by a young woman without panties. Within a few years, a new craze emerged: the slipless massage salon. More bizarre services followed, from clients being stroked through holes in coffins to forensic fetishists. A particularly popular destination was a club in Tokyo called Lucky Hole, where customers stood on one side of a plywood wall, with a hostess on the other. Between them was a hole large enough for a certain part of the male anatomy. Titled Lucky Hole, Nobuyoshi Araki captures the Japanese sex industry in full bloom and documents in over 800 photos the pleasure seekers and providers of the Shinjuku district in Tokyo before the enactment of the New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act in February 1985, which led many of the country’s sex establishments to close. Through mirrored walls, sheets, slavery, and orgies, this is the definitive account of an era of Bacchanalia, infused with moments of humor, precise poetry, and questioning interjections.
Softcover, English, 704 pages, Taschen edition.