The Social Functions of an Illegal Chinese Massage Parlor in Provincial Japan

Room 706...707...708. I was told by the lady, in her thickly accented Japanese, to head to the 7th floor of a nondescript high-rise apartment building a five-minute walk from the train station. The door to Unit 708 is not marked by anything in particular, with no sign whatsoever that is a business of any sort. It is unsurprising though. The building is, after all, a purely residential one, and a solidly middle-classed one at that. Surely the neighbors of Unit 708 would not appreciate it if they knew that some Chinese lady is operating a massage parlor within this exclusive symbol of well-lived white-collar life.

A woman, her age as well-masked as the bottom half of her face, answers the door when the doorbell to Unit 708 rings. Almost in an instant, I became aware that this is indeed a massage parlor. The overhead light of the entrance and the hallway leading to each room in the unit is coated with a reddish material, leaving the whole unit bathed in an unnaturally reddish light. The lady is wearing a lacy blouse that is skimpy enough to reveal the top half of her bra and the bottom half of her panties. The exposure of all of her legs and ample cleavage is doubtlessly designed to make the first impression an unforgettable one.

"Welcome," she says quietly, beckoning for me to go in and close the door as soon as possible. The journey can only take place when we are mindful of the neighbors. She takes me to one of the bedrooms, where a long bath towel coats a mattress on the ground. 

"Hand me the money, take everything off, go take a quick shower, and lie down on your stomach..." No sooner than I get into the room lit with only a dim candle-like electric lamp that I am given almost a set of instructions on how the next 90 minutes of this process works. She becomes slightly more natural when I switch into Chinese, surprised to see a brethren visit such an establishment.

The massage itself is not particularly remarkable. After all, there are plenty of fully legal, medically-oriented massage shops on the main street staffed with licensed and trained therapists. People come to the illegal Chinese ones, not for the skills, but the fleeting companionship. 

"So, you guys busy during these difficult times?" I casually ask as she applies pressure on my back. 

"Oh, very," she barely hesitates, "I have been working non-stop for five or six hours now."

"But you surely will get a break between customers, right? Massaging is hard work. At least every 90 minutes or so, you can rest before the next one comes in?" I inquire further about her work schedule.

"Haha, I can see that you are new. We have customers who book there or four hours in one session," she casually notes, "and then the next one comes immediately after that."

"But surely you are not massaging during that whole time?" I am a little surprised by the toughness of the work.

"No, people mostly come for the talk." She was all too willing to go into the details of her work. Guests ranging from as young as 19 to barely walking show up to this nondescript apartment unit, as early as noon. Asked if her customers are just lonely people with nothing better to do, she laughs, "Perhaps so."

Perhaps indeed. The loneliness of Japanese men is gradually being seen as a social problem grave enough for books to be written about the issue. With individuals often socialized to believe that talking to strangers in public places is taboo, and few social outlets outside work and school, there are just not many places where one can talk to women on the cheap without either coughing up tons of money or being suspected of ulterior motives. The hidden Chinese girls of the high-rise apartments fill a social need, of happily talking to strangers, touching them up, and, in relative terms, not asking for so much money in return.

Yet, even without the financial considerations, maybe the illegal parlor's Japanese customers are happier talking to these Chinese girls than their local equivalent. Trained Japanese girls working legally in the red light district are certainly more professional, but they are so overfriendly that it too often verges on outright fakeness that the customers know are just part of doing a job rather than real emotions in real conversations. These Chinese girls do not make up stories to make their customers happy. They just talk about themselves and their stories of how they ended up doing what they do in a foreign country. 

In some ways, their stories can be seen as positive. Yes, the masseuse works almost non-stop inside a small apartment from noon to midnight, with few breaks in between. But she also bought her own house, go home to China a few times a year, and have a thriving community of other girls who are all there to support each other as they switch from workplace to workplace to dodge the legal authorities and chase more customers. It is hardly a story of exploitation. And they know that they serve an important social function of keeping their customers mentally sane, a task that the wider Japanese society has clearly not been successful at.

The social function is so important that the masseuse does not seem to be worried about the sketchiness of the establishment she works in. When asked about whether this business is new, she nonchalantly comments, "yeah, the name and the location is new, but all the girls and a lot of the customers are not. When we shut down the last place we worked at, a lot of customers just followed us to this new place. They are quite loyal." It is almost like moving the meeting place of a social circle. Just as a group of friends may meet at a different cafe or restaurant every week, so can customers meet their favorite masseuse at the next nondescript apartment. May Unit 708 will return to its normal status as a middle-class residence in few months, but the social community around the massages will live on somewhere else.