My posts on the subject of prostitution in Japan can be divisive. How they handled it years ago, how they handled it during WW2, and how they handle it now are all quite different. The tragedies of adult human-trafficking for sexual purposes, and the pervasive child prostitution that goes on in [for example] Bangladesh, Southeast Asia, or some Eastern European countries is not the way things play out here on Okinawa.
Also, what you are about to read below is not for everyone's taste. Am I wrong about all of this? Have I missed something, somewhere? Has my Western brain been led astray by attempting to understand what's going on here? In the lobby of the above establishment, you can pick out via real photographs of the actual prostitutes girls working there the whore bathing assistant that turns you on.
You can see the photos on the display racks behind me all in individual plastic holders to be picked up and examined. Basic stats about each girl is on the photo. You can look at the photos all you want even if you aren't "buying". Don't be an ignorant Westerner who always extrapolates a situation in their mind, only to come to a wrong conclusion. And it also means these places are NOT "whore houses". This system has not changed in Japan for over years.
There was nothing democratic about it, and it was basically a sad manifestation of human trafficking the selling of women and female children into a life of sexual bondage from when there was little hope of escape. Even then, the Japanese themselves referred to these used and abused women as "inmates" as in those behind bars serving out a sentence. For the most part, they were "trapped" in the profession since childhood, burdened under contracts impossible to work off, and watched by police and guards to make sure they stayed put.
For some or many reading this caption, the word WHORE has a strongly nuanced and sometimes objectionable feel to it. It can carry the implication that the woman is doing it by her own choice as an adult, and was not forced by men or dire circumstances to enter the profession. In in many cultures especially monotheistic ones the word "WHORE" carries the heavy weight of "sin" or "waywardness" in its use, and is used pejoratively to negatively judge those who engage in it.
