The dispatch-type business that holds no fixed premises grew, after its institutional position was established by the 1999 revision of the Amusement Business Act, to a scale constituting one of the core categories of the contemporary Japanese sex industry. This article describes it as a current business model operated under the institutional fiction of the ban on honban (penetrative sex) imposed by the Anti-Prostitution Act.

Deriheru (Japanese: デリヘル, from “delivery health”; English delivery health) is a store-less category of fuzoku (Japanese commercial sex business) operated in the form of dispatching a female worker to a location designated by the client, such as a hotel or the client’s home. This article treats its institutional history, the features of the business, its difference from store-based health salons, and the course of its development by region and period.

Overview

Deriheru is a business that holds no fixed premises, takes orders by telephone or internet booking, and sends a female worker to a dispatch location such as a hotel designated by the client. Since its legal status was established as a “store-less sex-related special business” by the 1999 revision of the Amusement Business Act (fueiho), it expanded rapidly through the 2000s, and it now constitutes one of the core categories of the sex industry.

Because deriheru requires no premises rent or facility-maintenance costs, its operating costs are far lower than those of store-based categories. This economic structure gives the business a low barrier to entry and the property of being able to expand the number of operators rapidly, which was the principal factor in its rapid growth from the 2000s onward.

Institutional history

The 1999 revision of the Amusement Business Act

In April 1999, the Amusement Business Act was substantially revised, and a new legal category, “store-less sex-related special business,” was created. Before the revision, the legal position of dispatch-type sex businesses holding no fixed premises had been ambiguous; they were operated in practice but were not institutionally regulated. The 1999 revision clarified in law a notification system to each prefectural public-safety commission, permissible business areas, and age limits on employees, among other matters.

In consequence, dispatch-type businesses that had previously operated under names such as “call girl,” “dispatch-type hoteru,” and “apartment health” were reorganised as businesses legally notified under names such as “delivery health” and “dispatch-type fashion health.”

Rapid growth in the 2000s

After the institution was established in 1999, deriheru expanded rapidly through the 2000s. Cited as background factors are: low initial investment, since no premises rent is required; the spread of internet booking and advertising; the development of station-front entertainment districts and hotel quarters; and market separation from existing soapland and store-based health salons.

By the late 2000s, numerous deriheru operators were crowding into the major metropolitan areas nationwide, and the number of business notifications filed with the authorities increased sharply. In the same period, geographic expansion of operators (into provincial metropolitan areas), the chaining of operations, and the development of genre-specialised operators (specialising in mature women, married women, cosplay, and so on) advanced.

Features of the business

The dispatch process

The typical work process of deriheru is as follows. The client books with the operator by telephone or internet; the operator selects and instructs a female worker; the worker travels to the designated location (mainly a hotel); she attends to the client one-to-one; and after finishing she reports to the operator and returns, or moves on to the next dispatch.

Dispatch locations

Dispatch locations are, in principle, love hotels, business hotels, and the client’s home. By prefectural ordinance, permissible dispatch locations may be prescribed, and operation limited to specific areas (for example, a particular area around a station) is practised.

Service content

Like store-based health salons, deriheru is operated under the fiction of providing services that do not involve direct genital union (“honban”). This is the institutional boundary set up to avoid violation of the Anti-Prostitution Act. The actual state of compliance with the boundary is said to differ by operator, region, and period, and is the object of continuous police-administrative surveillance and crackdown.

Comparison with store-based businesses

Cost structure

In comparison with store-based health salons and pinsalo, deriheru has the economic advantages of requiring no premises rent, utilities, or facility investment; of high flexibility in scaling; and of easy geographic expansion. On the other hand, it carries the operational drawbacks of difficult management during dispatch, of distinctive challenges in worker safety management, and of difficulty in verifying the client’s reliability.

Service style

Whereas store-based health salons provide services that make use of a fixed facility environment (private rooms, bathrooms), deriheru uses the facilities of the dispatch location (mainly a love hotel). For this reason, certain facility-dependent services that are realisable in store-based businesses (services using a mat, bathrooms accommodating multiple clients, and so on) may be constrained in deriheru.

Customer characteristics

Whereas store-based businesses centre on a clientele within the geographic range of an accumulation area, deriheru can acquire a wide-area clientele across its entire dispatchable range. It functions as a business covering clienteles that store-based businesses find hard to capture, such as clients staying on business and clients in regions where no accumulation area exists.

Industry terms and operation

Principal industry terms

A distinctive vocabulary has settled in the deriheru industry. Representative examples are “photo nomination” (selecting a worker from a photo), “free” (a booking without nomination), “regular nomination” (re-nominating the same worker), “hotel fee separate” (the dispatch-location cost billed separately), “course” (time setting), “on the roster” (affiliated with an operator), and “shift” (the worker’s shift work).

Internet distribution

From the late 2000s onward, customer acquisition in the deriheru industry has been closely tied to the spread of internet booking sites. Booking portal sites such as “Pure-Loba,” “City Heaven,” and “Fuzoku Japan” have developed as intermediary businesses providing comprehensive information including operator profiles, worker photos, and reviews. These have become foundational infrastructure of the sex industry in the internet era citation needed.

Relation to the legal system

Ban on employing those under 18

The Amusement Business Act strictly prohibits the employment of workers under 18 in sex-related special businesses. Because of its property of holding no fixed premises, deriheru may have difficulties in the operation of age verification different from those of store-based businesses, and both industry self-regulation and administrative supervision are continuously required.

Regulation of dispatch locations

By prefectural ordinance, the permissible dispatch locations of deriheru are geographically prescribed in practice. For example, dispatch to residential areas, the vicinity of educational facilities, and the vicinity of public facilities is regulated by ordinance.

Relation to illegal employment

The employment of foreign-national workers in the deriheru industry raises several problems in relation to the residence-status system under the Immigration Control Act. When a person works under a residence status for tourism, study, and the like, it constitutes a violation of “activity outside the status” under the Immigration Control Act and may amount to the offence of promoting illegal employment. These are institutional challenges common to the contemporary sex industry as a whole, but in the deriheru industry in particular, verification of workers’ immigration and residence status may be operationally difficult.

Cultural references

The sociologist Atsuhiko Nakamura’s The Sociology of the Sex Industry (2017) carries out systematic research on the labour realities and economic structure of the contemporary Japanese sex industry, including deriheru. Because deriheru is a business holding no fixed premises, traditional methods of industry research (store observation, geographic-accumulation analysis, and so on) are hard to apply directly, and it is also a business for which the development of distinctive research methodology is required.

Including its relation to derivative spheres such as personal filming, deriheru is an important object of research for examining the influence that the development of store-less businesses has had on the structure of the contemporary Japanese sex industry.

See also

• Soapland
• Pinsalo
• Fashion health
• Honban
• Anti-Prostitution Act