This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

Japan’s literally desperate housewives are finding the close relationship between the Internet and adult entertainment can help them pick up a handy profit, according to Shukan Post (4/7).

Moviemaker Nikkatsu found a steady stream of income with its softcore “Hitozuma (Wife)” series of skin flicks in the ’70s and ’80s using porn professionals. But now, in Noughties Japan, ordinary, everyday housewives have taken the raunchy racket to a new level.

“Ladies’ comics and employment magazines for the adult industry are jam-packed with ads offering work in the movies. These ads have all got phrases like ‘Start filming today’ and ‘Position needs to be filled urgently,’ while offering rates of payment ranging anywhere from 30,000 yen to 800,000 yen,” the content producer of an adult video website tells Shukan Post. “In reality, payments are almost always 30,000 yen. The work is merely spending two or three hours for a single sex session.”

The producer says he gets about 10 inquiries about job offers a day. He asks interested applicants to send in a photo of their faces through their mobile phone, and then invites the women he deems best looking — about half the applicants — to come into his office for an interview. Those interested in taking on the work — again, about half the women he talks to — are taken to a nearby love hotel and put onto the job immediately.

“An overwhelming number of the job-seekers are in it for the money. A majority of inquiries about work are concentrated around paydays,” the producer says. “They call up asking for work, saying they haven’t got enough cash to pay the rent, need money to get by, or want to be able to pay their phone bills.”

Most of the housewives looking for adult video work are in their 20s to 40s. Some of them even turn up for their dirty work with their young children in tow.

A 30-year-old housewife identified only as Mrs. A tells the Post why she felt compelled to star in an adult movie in February.

“I look after all the money in our house, but we have to scrimp and save just to get by each month. My husband and I don’t have a particularly bad relationship, but we’ve been married five years now and only make love about once a month,” Mrs. A tells Shukan Post. “This job pays the same day you work. Otherwise, it’s just the same as any other part-time job.”

Ayumi Sakai, a writer well versed in female sexuality issues, explains why growing numbers of Japanese housewives have little compunction about baring it all for blue movies.

“Since (the mid-’90s) when prostitution was suddenly referred to by the euphemism ‘enjo kosai’ (literally, ‘compensated dating’), women have become sexually liberated at an alarmingly quick rate,” Sakai says. “Even if the pay is low, women are attracted to the idea of performing in movies if they know they’re going to get paid for it.”

Hiromi Ikeuchi, operator of Tokyo Family Laboratory, a therapy center to help families cope with their woes, says women have developed a taste for saucy celluloid because they’ve become too strong overall.

“We’ve gone past the age of equality of the sexes and are instead now it feels like a time when women have started to become excessive in their demands,” Ikeuchi tells Shukan Post. “They get into the belief that their husbands aren’t looking after them enough, are filled with discontent, then race off and have affairs, demand divorces, rack up debts and declare bankruptcy. I kind of feel like we’re in an era when women have lost control of their desires and no longer know how to be patient.”

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(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)