IMAGE CLUB (WITH OBI)

Kyoichi Tsuzuki
IMAGE CLUB (WITH OBI)

Photographs: Kyoichi Tsuzuki

Text: Kyoichi Tsuzuki

Publisher: amus arts press

62 pages

Pictures: 60

Year: 2003

ISBN: 946483-79-9

Price: 55 €

Comments: Softcover under illustrated dust jacket with obi, 22,1 x 20 cm, color photographs. First edition. In very good condition, other than a light scratch on the obi.

Imekura as Simulacra Art

You don't bother to look around the room.

Not when she's unhooking her bra and slipping off her panties right there, you don't.

What red-blooded male would pay attention to the interior decor at a time like this?

Although once you've shot your load, you might just notice the strange surroundings: a tiny prison cell or interrogation chamber of a cubicle partitioned off by thin plywood, hardly a wall. All very nondescript, it's not even wallpapered. And yet, what are those passenger train handgrip straps hanging from the ceiling? Or that gymnast's vaulting horse? Or the gynecologist's examination table, what's that doing here?

Welcome to the imekura or "imeji kurabu" (image club), a very peculiar service indeed. A makeshift setting where you or who-knows-how-many other customers can realise your wildest fantasies, whether it's "molesting a female commuter on the train" or "sexual harassment at the office" or "sneaking into a coed's bedsit." Playing along faithfully in character is an imekura girl as the object of your desire. She'll be wearing a special costume corresponding to the scenario (school uniform, secretary's suit, nurse's whites), while acting out the desired set performance (some fastidious customers insist on bringing their own prepared script).

One way or another, of course, all the role-playing eventually comes down to "coming." Although in the world of imekura, with its "no penetration" ground rule, release generally takes the form of wanking off or sumata "bare crotch" massaging between her thighs. Purely surrogate acts, with no hint of mimicking a loving relationship as in conventional hard-core prostitution. What need would there be? To the imekura customer, the imekura girl is merely a character in his own mental pornoscape. In exchange for which, he gladly forks over 20,000 yen per "play"- by no means cheap.

For that kind of money, one can procure "ordinary sex" with a prostitute almost anywhere in Japan, but some men simply go for total immersion in a pseudo-dreamworld of their own making. Open for business from the morning every weekday, all you have to do is call up, book the room and girl of your choice, and go. In actual practice, the flow of customers is virtually non-stop. An offbeat escape from the regular routine of foreplay-penetration-ejaculation, imekura is a triumph of ineffably Japanese imagination, somewhere along the lines of "love hotels" tarted up with gimmicks that bear no direct relation to orgasmic pleasure or street gang motorbikes too heavy with chrome customizing to even run properly. Undeniably, the effect, the sheer impact, is overpowering.

No one would mistake imekura for art. But maybe that's only because they tend to occupy the same buildings with massage parlours. What would people think if the whole scene were reproduced as-is in some trendy contemporary art museum? Might we not see it as some marvelously difficult

No, imekura is in essence the very furthest thing from simulacra art. No unknown artist or anonymous collector or nameless viewer stands behind this phenomenon, no one wants to be seen appreciating or supporting it. If anything, those who indulge run the risk of possible arrest, and the business itself being forced to shut down. No, this is wholly unconscious of the art world, and for that very reason, a truly revolutionary project of that great museum of living culture known as the "street."

-Kyoichi Tsuzuki