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.

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. 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.

The first one to open was in Osaka in 1980.[2] 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.

Eventually such coffee shops gave way to fashion health (massage) clubs and few No-pan kissa, 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.

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

References

  1. 1 2 Allison, Anne (1994). Nightwork: sexuality, pleasure, and corporate masculinity in a Tokyo hostess club. University of Chicago Press. pp. 131–132. ISBN 0-226-01487-8.
  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 0-394-53775-0.
  3. ↑ Bestor, Theodore C. (1989). Neighborhood Tokyo. Studies of the East Asian Institute. Stanford University Press. p. 42. ISBN 0-8047-1797-4.
  4. ↑ "Ministry officials 'demanded' sex club entertainment". New Sunday Times. 28 January 1998. 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 0-520-21990-2.
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