It started in 1978 with a regular coffee shop near Kyoto. Rumors spread that the waitresses were not wearing underwear under their mini skirts. Similar establishments followed across the country. Men would queue outside to pay three times the regular price of coffee just to be served by a young woman without underwear. Within a few years, a new craze emerged: the "no-panties" massage. Increasingly bizarre services followed, from stroking customers through holes in coffins to train fetishes. A particularly popular destination was a club in Tokyo called "Lucky Hole," where customers found themselves on one side of a wall and a hostess on the other. Between them, there was a hole just large enough for a certain part of male anatomy. Using the title Lucky Hole, Nobuyoshi Araki documents Japan's sex industry through more than 800 photographs, capturing the pleasure seekers and providers in Tokyo's Shinjuku neighborhood before the Control and Improvement of New Entertainment Act of February 1985 that shut down many of the sex sites in the country. Through mirrors, sheets, bondage, and orgies, this is the ultimate account of an era of bacchanalian celebration, filled with moments of humor, following poetic precision and inquiries.

Pages: 704, Year of Publication: 0403, Dimensions: 14x14cm