Pleasure parlors: Araki's tour of an erotic underworld It started in 1978 with an ordinary coffee shop near Kyoto. Word spread that the waitresses woreno panties under their miniskirts.Similar establishments popped up across the country. Men waited in line outside to pay three times the usual coffee price just to be served by a panty-free young woman.Within a few years, a new craze took hold: theno-panties massage parlor. Increasingly bizarre services followed, fromfondling clients through holes in coffinstocommuter-train fetishists. One particularly popular destination was a Tokyo club called Lucky Hole where clients stood on one side of a plywood partition, a hostess on the other. In between them was a hole big enough for a certain part of the male anatomy.Taking theLucky Holeas his title, Nobuyoshi ArakicapturesJapan's sex industry in full flower, documenting inmore than 800 photosthe pleasure-seekers and providers of Tokyo s Shinjuku neighborhood before the February 1985 New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act put a stop to many of the country's sex locales. Throughmirrored walls, bed sheets, the bondage and the orgies, this is the last word on an age of bacchanalia, infused with moments ofhumor, precise poetry, and questioning interjections. About the Series: Bibliotheca Universalis Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, the name TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing.Bibliotheca Universalisbrings together nearly 100 of our all-time favorite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.Bookworm s delight never bore, always excite! Text in English, French, and German "