Seems like most developed nations have their own versions of what we in America used to call the "no-tell motel." Rooms rent by the hour. Prostitution and adultery are the stock in trade. In Japan they are very euphemistically referred to as "love hotels," which is sure a puzzler to me. As Tina Turner would say, "What's Love Got To Do With It?" The Mainichi Daily News reports today that residents of the city of Akashi in Hyogo Prefecture are, as the headline says, "feeling stiffed by love hotel erection."

And their fight has now gone to the National Diet, with Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Hidekatsu Yoshii urging a Lower House committee to spark the cops and local government authorities into action to shut down the hotel.

...even though the hotel is proposed for construction in a commercial zone, it lies immediately beside a residential area and little more than a stone's throw from elementary and junior high schools. "If the so-called business hotel really is in fact a love hotel, it clearly breaks the law," Tatsuya Tsujimoto, a member of the Akashi Municipal Assembly, tells Shukan Jitsuwa. "The city and prefectural governments have got to conduct more thorough investigations to make sure illegal hotels like this one can't be built."

Yes, it is a matter for the city and state governments, not the national assembly. I suppose it is telling that a Diet member belonging to the Japanese Communist Party wants to make it a federal case.

Around Seattle, motels frequented by prostitutes and drug users are effectively clustered on Aurora Avenue North, and south, along International Boulevard in an especially seedy strip near Sea-Tac Airport. Aurora and International are actually the same street, also known as Route 99, which used to be the main north-south highway, from Canada to California, before the construction of I-5. You could call it Seattle's Spine of Sleaze.

I don't think anyone much cares just exactly what brand of kink is transacted on the creaky beds and soiled carpets in Seattle's "love hotel" zones, so long as it doesn't turn violent. Whereas a precisely Clinton-esqe code of sexual conduct obtains for Japanese "love hotels," according to a new book by Mark D. West, professor of law and director of the Center For Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan. Reviewing the book in Asahi Shimbun, Kenneth J. Ruoff notes:

... (West) informs us that individuals who intersect with the love-hotel industry have concluded that paid liaisons for oral sex are not in violation of the Prostitution Law, which prohibits payment for vaginal penetration. Proprietors of love hotels thus welcome business from solicitors who are being compensated to perform oral sex but make clear that prostitution is not permitted in their establishments. Upon reading this section, one cannot help but be reminded that the exposure of U.S. President Bill Clinton's oral dalliances with intern Monica Lewinsky once had individuals throughout the world debating not only the future of the Clinton presidency but also the definition of sex.

New Zealand Herald sports columnist Paul Lewis observes that if you can get past the often-fruity decor, Japanese love hotels are a great bargain.

Japan is major bucks expensive and you can see likely tourists wondering about the trip. Some years ago, after...(covering a sports team's) tour of Japan, I take some time off and struck out on my own for a wee holiday. Silly boy. Once the use of corporate credit card was gone, the full weight of Japan fell on me like a sumo wrestler.

Two nights in only a reasonable hotel and I was approaching penury. Finding a backstreet bowl of noodles required a call to my bank manager. Finally, I remembered the words of a friend of mine who has her own travel writing business. Go to the love hotels, she said, much cheaper. Love hotels, if you don't already know, are the places where Japanese couples go to, er, discuss the economy. They are rented by the hour and come in all sorts of bizarre shapes, sizes and themes.

They are plentiful because many Japanese live in extended families and don't have anywhere to monitor inflation. One I ended up in was a hideous purple and pink affair with gossamer curtains over the bed and the walls decked out with shields, swords and coats of arms and a suit of armour in the corner. Quite what Japanese couples did with or made of this when discussing the economy, I can't say. Do you want the drawbridge up or down, darling?

"Love hotels" and their ilk provide a useful social function by segregating illicit activities from straight-living travellers. As I was reminded when staying in a brand-name hotel in Vancouver a few years ago with my wife and two children. On my way back up to our room, a young lady of the evening stepped aboard, cell phone pressed to ear, and proceeded to have a conversation that went just about like this: "I'm in the elevator now. What room are you in? OK. No, it's Tiffany, not Marcella. See ya soon, sweetie." Good thing the rest of my family was already up in our room. Vancouver obviously needs more love hotels for the discerning traveller, away from the city's skank HQ, the Downtown Eastside.

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 2, 2005 07:50 AM