Tokyo Bordello (1987) Yoshiwara enjo

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Tokyo Bordello (1987) Yoshiwara enjo

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Tokyo Bordello (1987) Yoshiwara enjo

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The central sex scene in Hideo Gosha’s Tokyo Bordello (1987) is between two women but it is not about a lesbian affair, it’s more like how to get a leg up in a skin trade driven by profiteering and human exploitation. Stephen Tan reviews.

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When your business goes bad, you don’t go the poor house. Just send your daughter to the whorehouse! That’s what Hisano’s father did to her when his business crashed.

Set in 1907 in Japan, Hisano, a 19-year-old woman from what looks like a middle class family, starts work in a brothel to pay off her father’s debts. The first order of business is to go for a medical. One look and the doctor says: “You’re not a virgin any more,” meaning she has had a boyfriend and, more specifically, had sex in the past.

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All the new girls at the Yoshiwara red-light district are then given a briefing at the police station and a helpful officer tells Hisano: “When you’re with a man… You climax when it is the most pleasant. But when you have hundreds of men, if you climaxed each time, you’d soon be a wreck. Just make the customer believe that you climaxed, got it?”

At the brothel, Hisano is told to assist one of house’s main prostitutes, Kokone (The other money-bringing prostitutes being Yoshizato and Kobana), and Kokone takes a liking to the newcomer.

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However, Hisano freaks out when she gets her first client and tries to run away. She is caught and tied up in a storeroom. Kokone tells her: “I recommended you to that customer and you put me to shame. If you don’t like this house, repay what you owe and go away… Your family is into debt up to their neck. That’s why you’re here. You’re nothing but a prostitute. The most important thing for a prostitute is to give the customer satisfaction in bed. He must believe he is able to kindle your body. You must moan and gasp. The man must be roused watching you and hearing you. You will do to me what I’m going to do to you.”

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And with that, Kokone unties Hisano and the two have a passionate night of sex. Soon, Hisano becomes much sought-after and Kokone receives a marriage proposal from a very young client which she laughs off. Having paid off her debt, Kokone leaves.

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Hisano gets a new client, Nobusuke, heir to the Furushima empire. Nobusuke apologises for not being able to help Hisano a year earlier and asks her to lie down beside him. One night, Hisano tells Nobusuke: “Since we’ve met, you never touched me. Why didn’t you? Because l’m tainted?” Nobusuke asks Hisano to undress. After a good and painful look, Nobusuke tells Hisano to get dressed.

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One day, after a tiff with Kobana, Hisano later tells Nobusuke: “I sold my body in order to become the Great Geisha. Why shouId I step aside to let that lazy girl have her way? I am a prostitute. Since the very day I arrived in Yoshiwara, I’ve been a whore and I’ve accepted it. Whether you like it or not.” To which Nobusuke sadly replies: “You have the soul of a prostitute.”

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Nobusuke later returns with enough money for Hisano to buy her way out of the brothel but Hisano decides to stay and, not only that, take part in the parade that proclaims her the Geisha of Yoshiwara. After three years and paying off her debt, Hisano leaves the Yoshiwara district with the rich man, Tsubosaka. Along the way, she hears that Yoshiwara has caught fire and hurries back when she realises that Nobusuke was still in the area.

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Given that Hideo Gosha’s Tokyo Bordello (1987) is set in a brothel, it is unavoidable and even inevitable that there will be a certain amount of nudity. And, following in the footsteps of Nagisa Oshima’s In The Realm Of The Senses (1976), Hideo Gosha’s movie certainly has its own art-house aspirations.

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The film is decorously shot and edited - Midnight Eye wrote that set decorator Yoshinobu Nishioka rebuilt 150 metres of the 300-metre long Nakaumero, the main street of the Yoshiwara, where the oirandochu, the greatest of the courtesans (joro), lived and worked. The movie’s main twist is that its central sex scene is not between any one of the women prostitutes with a male client but between two female characters, Kokone and Hisano.

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However, Tokyo Bordello does not play up any romance between the two - from what is shown, there is none - and the sex, while enjoyable for both of the women, is more like a senior showing a junior the ropes of the trade, so to speak. A shame really, since there are more sparks between Kokone and Hisano than between Nobusuke and Hisano. And since there is hardly any back story between Nobusuke and Hisano, other than they know each other, one wonders what is Nobusuke’s look-but-don’t-touch approach all about. Is he impotent is the first question that comes to mind.

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In the Korean TV drama, Gu Family Book, a young noblegirl refuses to become a gisaeng and tries to run away. She is captured, practically stripped, tied to a tree and whipped. Hardly anything so dramatic happens to Hisano and, let’s also say, because she has had sex before, that in itself, is an “advantage” - she’s experienced!

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While one can imagine the hardships the women in the brothel had to suffer, Gosha’s movie is actually a bit short in the melodrama department. Even the deaths of two key prostitutes are hardly able to muster the kind of poignancy, much less despair, that Shohei Imamura’s Ballad Of Narayama (1983) did when a man had to leave his mother to die on a mountain.

On the whole, Tokyo Bordello can be seen as bitter, art house-porn lite though a documentary on a day in the life of a Yoshiwara prostitute might even be more absorbing.

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Historically, Yoshiwara is the red-light district in Tokyo. According to the wikipedia, the area had over 9,000 women in 1893, many of whom suffered from syphilis. One way a woman could get out of Yoshiwara was for a rich man to buy her contract from the brothel and keep her as his personal wife or concubine. Another would be if she managed to be successful enough that she was able to buy her own freedom. [Many die of syphilis.] The area was damaged by an extensive fire in 1913 [the fire in the movie took place in 1911], then nearly wiped out by an earthquake in 1923. It remained in business, however, until prostitution was outlawed by the Japanese government in 1958 after World War II.

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While prostitution is outlawed in Japan [the definition of “prostitution” does not extend to a “private agreement” reached between a woman and a man in a brothel], prostitution in $ingapore in itself is not illegal. The wikipedia reports that in $ingapore, police unofficially tolerate and monitor a limited number of brothels, where the prostitutes are regularly screened for diseases; however prostitution outside these brothels also exists. The main red-light district in $ingapore is in Geylang… “Some bars in Duxton Hill also offer sexual services, the most controversial ones being located at Adelphi which also houses a handful of law firms as well as being within walking distance of the Ministry of Law in $ingapore.”

Note: The Tokyo Bordello DVD is banned in $ingapore.

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Special Features:
- Interviews with the cast and crew (13 '): Fujio Morita (cinematographer) and Yoshinobu Nishioka (production designer) (subbed)
- Photo Gallery