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The Love Hotel Diaries<br />
Ed Jacob<br />
The love hotel is a uniquely Japanese institution, a sexual<br />
space for rent that is used by everyone from young teens<br />
in love to parents getting away from their children. Known<br />
for its over-the-top architecture and kinky theme rooms, the<br />
love hotel takes forms as diverse as Cinderella castles or luxury<br />
cruise ships, using everything from giant Santa Clauses<br />
to Statues of Liberty to attract customers. Inside, there are<br />
rooms filled from floor to ceiling with Mickey Mouse memorabilia,<br />
boxing ring beds, glow-in-the-dark jellyfish aquariums,<br />
and Marquis de Sade sex dungeons.<br />
Although the majority of guests are couples, newer love hotels<br />
offering afternoon tea, flower baths, and aromatherapy<br />
kits during the day are also becoming increasingly popular.<br />
Japan’s love hotels are found all over the nation and are said<br />
to receive more than two million visitors a day. According<br />
to calculations by University of Michigan professor Mark D.<br />
West, about half of all sex in Japan takes place in love hotels. 1<br />
Think about that for a second. If this figure is accurate, you’d<br />
expect that half of the 1.65 million Japanese babies born every<br />
year are conceived in one.<br />
Walls in Japan can be paper-thin (literally); most Japanese<br />
parents sleep with their children until well into elementary<br />
school; the Japanese concept of wa (harmony) means that<br />
people go to great lengths to avoid upsetting their neighbors.<br />
Having an anonymous place for a romantic escape can be a<br />
godsend.<br />
The first love hotels as such appeared in the early 1970s, but<br />
their ancestors date back to the age of the samurai. Originally<br />
places for assignations with prostitutes or<br />
settings for adulterous love affairs, they have<br />
evolved into an institution that’s not just for<br />
sleazy sex.<br />
The modern love hotel is a highly sophisticated leisure facility<br />
where couples go to spend quality time together, indulge<br />
in a little pampering, and enjoy each other’s company in a<br />
love space with a romantic atmosphere and the latest in entertainment<br />
technology. The typical room is equipped with<br />
a widescreen TV, karaoke system, DVD player, video-game<br />
console, sex-toy vending machine, jet bath or Jacuzzi, and a<br />
wide variety of toiletries. On the pillow or headboard, there is<br />
always a condom.<br />
With all the neon and strange rooms, it’s easy to overlook one<br />
of the most fascinating aspects of love hotels—the rakugaki<br />
chou (literally, “graffiti notebooks”), guest books in each<br />
room in which customers write messages to each other or to<br />
the hotel’s management. They contain jottings by teenagers<br />
sharing their first sexual experiences, messages from salarymen<br />
and office ladies having afternoon trysts, older married<br />
couples getting away from the kids for a romantic night, and<br />
other patrons.<br />
About half of all sex in Japan takes<br />
place in love hotels.<br />
Leafing through the pages, mostly pictures drawn by highschool<br />
or university girls with cute messages about how<br />
wonderful their boyfriends are, you will find some of the most<br />
interesting reading material you’ve ever seen. The following<br />
messages come from popular love hotels all over the country,<br />
found both in actual love hotel rooms and on love hotel-related<br />
websites.<br />
Written by a female visiting the hotel with her boyfriend:<br />
Today I came here with my boyfriend. He looks like<br />
Teru, the vocalist from the glam rock band Glay.<br />
THE LOVE HOTEL DIARIES 255
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