ura hello work c.14: porno store owner
What is Shinya Kusaka’s URA HELLO WORK?
Where can I buy it?
14- UNCENSORED PORNO SHOP OWNER (裏ビデオ販売店 URA BIDEO HANBAITEN)
RISK: ****
SALARY:***
HARD LABOR:**
ILLEGALITY:****
“DO THE ‘GOOD FELLAS’ WORK HERE?” “SHUDDUP, YOU!”
If you walk around the Kabukicho neighborhood, store signs beckon to you: “7 videos for $100!” “5 DVDs for $100!” They’re not talking about the normal pornos that have the mosaic censor on them. They’re talking about what’s commonly called URA bideo (裏ビデオ,meaning ‘black market video’). These videos are illegal, so I wonder why so many stores are selling them.
I decided I wanted to hear more about this phenomenon, so I dared to venture into the porn world in search of raw material for my book. If you go just a little way into Kabukicho, you see over ten porno stores, all around. If you hesitate too long, you will lose your nerve to enter: in this neighborhood, it’s pretty likely that the stores’ Yakuza owners are lurking nearby! I’m feeling a certain amount of anxiety about asking these people my journalism questions!
There’s a lot of first-floor porno shops, and even more varieties underground, if you take my meaning. The prices on their signs vary really widely, almost at random – from “5 for $100” to “10 for $100.” If you loiter too long without going in, you’ll get pestered by brothel guys trying to take you to their club. So, you go inside, just for the sake of research, and find a lot of normal, non-scary guys browsing the shelves. The guys are from a broad age-range : middle-aged to college-aged. They don’t seem scared or nervous – the scary part is going inside!
. This being the case, I decided go go on in. Immediately on my right is a rugged old man who mumbles, “Welcome.” The walls are lined with uncensored polaroids taken during the movie shoots, with the title of the video written on them. One video gets you four polaroids, thrown in as a ‘service’. The actual dvds and tapes are not in the shop. Though really cramped, the place is well-lit and not run-down. There’s two or three other guys, hungrily eyeing the polaroids. “Let me know if you can’t find what you’re looking for,” says the rugged old man. I remember I have to pose as a customer, so I walk around the store some more. The customers have small note-pads. If they see polaroids they like, they’ll write the titles down with their ball-point pens (ed. note: ball-point? why does he include this detail?!?) and then go to the counter and order a dubbed copy of the video. Some of these guys are making pretty long lists! There’s a huge abundance of goods – over 100 titles. These include leaked sex-tapes of showbiz women, which are irresistible to fans.
But I didn’t come here to buy pornography! I had a book to do! I needed to find out the system behind all these illegal videos. I marshaled my courage and daringly asked the proprietor to divulge the details:
”Um, I’m a writer and I uh.”
I hadn’t even finished when he shut me down with a furious scowl. Awkward! He doesn’t believe me. What’s more he is making a gangster mug at me, overflowing with menace and disgust. “What are you up to, huh?”
His voice changed, too. It’s gravelly and thuggish! This is not the time for me to gather my research material! It looks like it would be dangerous for me to even answer candidly. I wanted to explain everything, but my lips wouldn’t move.
“If you’re not buying, then get out.”
The interview, such as it was, seemed to be over already. But I’m still a real writer, after all, and I still had some will-power left. Before leaving, I asked one more question: “So, I guess this place is run by the good-fellas after all, hey?”
“Shuddup, you!”
Feeling the pressure of the Yakuza, I immediately apologized and left the store. Back outside, I looked down the street of porno shops, and noticed just how long it was, and each store was full of potential danger for me. I retreated to a coffee-shop to gather my thoughts.
At length, I decided to resume my challenge. But at the second store, it turned out just like the first! I was back on the street with my tail between my legs. I should just quit now. But, no, in for a penny, in for a pound, I decided. The more they turn me away, the more it fuels my desire to get to the bottom of it all. That’s the kind of person I am! So I went into the third store. It had the same atmosphere as the others, even selling the same videos. The only difference was the way the manager greeted the customers. This particular old guy said “Welcome” in the old-fashioned way popular back in the first half of the 1900s. It was a good omen, I felt – maybe this is the place where I will get my interview!
For five minutes I walked around the store, until I heard the old man’s voice: “Let me know if I can help you find something.” I couldn’t let this opportunity slip away. I bravely whipped out my business card and asked him, “Could I please interview you for my book?” He timidly took my card, and although he made a dubious face, I felt that he was my best shot so far: he wasn’t making the ‘WTF is your problem?” face. “Please wait a moment,” he said, and walked into the back room. I waited for what seemed like a small eternity, when suddenly the old man re-appeared with a man in his thirties. The man introduced himself as Mr. Peninsula (32, not his real name) I began to repeat my request to him, when he cut me off with a sour face, “Yeah, I heard already! I’ll tell you what I can.”
HALF THE STORES ARE RUN BY YAKUZA, THE OTHER HALF BY CIVILIANS.
First, I asked if the Yakuza personally own or manage all the stores?
“No. I’d say it’s about half Yakuza and half amateurs. Just so you know, I’m one of the amateurs.
When I heard this, I was relieved – it felt as if I could breathe again. This must mean that the first two stores I went into WERE mob-controlled. What was I thinking, just barging in like that? To an average customer, mob stores and amateur-run stores look the same, but if you start nosing around their business, the results can be very different!
“The ones run by Yakuza are less likely to carry the ura-bideo because they’re more likely to be raided by the police. I’m probably asking for trouble just by answering your questions. If you didn’t have a business card, I wouldn’t be talking to you at all.”
I was grateful that Mr. Peninsula believed my story, but I still had to press further to the core of the matter: I asked him to explain the system: how do they get the videos, and how do they select which ones to purchase? These are things the average person simply can’t even guess.
“From the old days- hell, even until a few years ago – you’d buy a master tape of a porno from a mobster. Then you’d go down to the video store and buy a bunch of blank VHS cassettes for $50 cents a pop. But every time you dub it, the quality degrades a little. That’s why DVDs are all the rage now. They don’t degrade no matter how many copies you make — Handy little things!”
They’d take the master to a black-market ‘dubbing store’ to duplicate it. The store had 20 VHS dubbing decks and 5 DVD burners. In the old days, the dubbers were called ‘suitcase men’ because when they were done, they’d show up to your porno store with a suitcase bulging with illegal porn! But they don’t call them that anymore.
“Our store has a purchaser who decides what to buy. But we only know the guy who sells the masters. Anything beyond that – who he’s connected to, where the money goes – is taboo. I don’t want to know anything about that.”
In Kabukicho, all the porno stores pay ketsumochi to the gangs (けつ持ちmeans protection money, but the literal translation is more evocative: ‘asshole-guarding money’). Probably even legal businesses have to pay ketsumochi.
“It’s only natural! The rate varies depending on the store, from $300 to $1,000 per month. How much do WE pay? I could get in trouble for telling that. Let’s just say that it falls in the middle there somewhere.”
THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU SELL EVEN ONE ITEM OF ‘LOLITA’ PORN
Even if you pay your protection money, you can still get in trouble . . . from the police:
“Like I said before, the police usually target the Yakuza-owned shops. But of course the gangsters don’t put their own names on the documents. They have a non-‘family’ guy who ‘officially’ runs the business. They’ll pay him around $5,000 a month. If the police raid the place, he’s legally responsible. The cops know he’s just a front, and they’ll interrogate him pretty good, trying to get him to tell who the silent partner is. If he doesn’t talk, the mob will give him a $10,000 bonus when he gets out of jail. I don’t know what happens if he DOES snitch, but it seems like a scary situation, don’t you think?
“The other thing you have to be careful of, is Lolita porn or ‘enkou’ videos (‘enkou’ is a contraction of ‘enjo kousai’ which was a kind of trend where high-school girls would go on dates with daddy-aged businessmen for money). The penalties for that are much more strict than for ura-bideo. But a surprising number of guys want those videos. Sometimes guys will come in and ask me directly if I know where they can get some. If he’s a regular, I might refer him to a guy I know, but even that is dangerous. The worst is guys that I’ve never seen before, that come in and ask for exactly one Lolita video and nothing else. They’re almost certainly keiji (刑事：detectives)! I don’t have a lot of options – I have to refuse to serve them. Tell ‘em not to come back. We never deal that stuff – it’s more trouble than it is worth. Even within illegal-porn, there exists a ‘red zone’ of really bad stuff. You’d have to be ready to go to jail at any time, selling stuff like that. Some people love the money that much, I suppose. Don’t understand it myself, personally”
I asked him about his wages – less than I thought.
“We make around 1 or 2 thousand dollars on a weekday, 6 or 7 on weekends and holidays. Of course it was more back in the ‘bubble economy’ days (of the late ‘80s). Wages aren’t so high – I make around $3,000 a month, but my employees only get $100 a day. If a store is really popular, the manager might get $5,000 a month, but I’ve never heard of a manager making $10,000 a month!”
If that’s the case, why did Mr. Peninsula go into this line of work?
“I wanted to make some money, sure, but I also liked the ease of the work: I can set my own hours, it’s not physically demanding, and. . .basically it’s an ok job! Although I can’t say I’ll never be arrested.”
In this business, the more that one store sells, the less the next-door store sells. So they compete vigorously for customers. One store might slash prices, while the next store fights back by getting the new videos before his competitor.
“The really popular videos. . hmm. . .leaked sex tapes, I’d have to say. Hidden camera footage of famous idol-singers at the hot-springs. Famous stars. Like (redacted) and of course Ms. (redacted). If they’re as famous as (redacted) we can sell a hundred copies, easily. We can charge $100 for a DVD of that. It used to be that there was an entire separate system for these kinds of things, much more expensive and all that, but nowadays we just sell them like regular pornos.”
‘PREMIER’ BOOKS CAN FETCH $3,000 APIECE
While I was interviewing Mr. Peninsula, I noticed that there were a lot of customers in the store. Perhaps because it was friendlier than the mob-run stores, and Mr. Peninsula would greet each customer with a pleasant word. One customer in particular seemed to be waiting to talk to Mr. Peninsula – he was looking for a particular urabon (裏本, or black-market book). Peninsula’s store sells uncensored books as well as movies. I’d heard of them but never seen one until now. One book for $40, three for $100. Why would someone buy such a book when DVDs are cheaper AND have moving pictures?
“The book fans are a different breed than the video fans. Instead of buying a ‘master’ from our mob connection, we buy a ‘gara’ (it looks like a book cover, but there’s no book! Just a cover with the description of the book’s perverted contents printed on it). The customers have to pre-order the book sight-unseen. If it looks interesting, maybe 20 or 30 people will buy it. But if it seems stupid, we’ll be lucky to sell 10 copies. Of course each book is different, but most are in the $12-22 dollar range. I guess the main difference is that you can’t ‘dub’ books the way you can dub video-tapes. So if they miss their chance to buy the book when it first comes out, they’re pretty much out of luck! Everything is so limited-edition, the used-book prices are very high. Sometimes we’ll get a used first-edition porno book from the ‘80s – those are so rare, we can get up to $3,000 apiece for them! Book customers are more dependable that way, you could say.”
I’d already taken an hour of Mr. Peninsula’s time, and was running out of questions to ask. I thanked him for his kindness. “Is there anything else you want to know?” he graciously replied. My last question was, how do you feel about selling illegal things?
“I don’t think it’s so evil, really. In this life, people accumulate a lot of stress. We give guys a little breathing room. Some of the most conservative, button-down, law-abiding salarimen come here for a little fun, and it makes me feel good to help them. As for the law, well, we can’t do anything to change it, so whatever!”
9 comments Tags: crime, ura hello work —
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How can this business still exist? Don’t they have internet in Japan?
Yeah I was going to ask that too. Even though shits still illegal in Japan, all the porn guys gotta do is host offshore and they can forget about the mosaic. I get the collectibility of books and rare stuff, but who the fuck pays for regular porno???
Oh and on that note, I once had a Japanese friend who tried to convince me of the merits of the mosaic. Basically he said it enhances the fantasy by allowing your imagination to take over. WTF else could possibly be going on down there, I asked. Tenctacles, gender reversal, mechanical hydraulics and produce was what he came up with off the top of his head. I conceded defeat.
Urabooks?! Why?! So some perverted guy could read about チンポ going into that sweet 穴?
Well for that matter, who the fuck buys physical porn DVDs here in America any more? And yet the old-school porn shops are still around… I guess there are enough masturbators stuck in their old habits, or something. Or maybe there’s some sort of value to having a physical item – kind of like wanting one’s comics printed in a physical book, I suppose.
Hm.
Hi!
I was just wondering, did you interview this man in japanese or in english?
@niko: naw, chief! I am translating the book written by a japanese journalist. That’s why there’s a link at the top of the post to the book.
Ahh, I didn’t noticed it. Sorry!
Cool anyway!
I like your site!
@niko: thanks! And if you are in Japan, you can buy that book at book off or village vanguard.