Its 6:45pm on a Friday in Osaka. The rush hour has begun, and the trains are packed with commuters scrunched together like sardines. Except that, strangely, on the busy Midosuji subway line, what should be a suffocatingly crowded train is virtually desolate but for two passengers: A middle-aged salaryman and a petite office lady (or OL). They have the car to themselves.
The salaryman eyes the girl carefully for a few moments, but she pays no attention to him. The train ride is smooth, in fact the train hardly seems to be moving at all. Only the sound of the rails rumbling underneath and the occasional announcements escaping the speakers remind the pair that they're on their commute.

Suddenly, the salaryman puts his briefcase down on the empty seat in front of him and steps closer to the girl, finally placing his hand on her thigh. He begins caressing her hips, slowly working his fingers to the hem of the girl's skirt before gradually hiking it up towards her waist. The woman feigns irritation and tries to pull away. But after a few moments, she turns and reaches for the man's fly, skillfully unzipping it and thrusting her head aside.

Thirty minutes later, the ride is over and the salaryman gets out of the train car. But he's not getting out at a station. In fact, he was never really on a train in the first place. He was merely in a simulation: the 'subway' theme room at an image club, where, shortly, the OL will begin repeating the same scenario with other customers.

The image club is the latest among several new fetish fads to become popular in Japan in recent months. In the sex industry, too, innovation is important. Serving as a kind of sexual Disneyland, image clubs allow patrons fo fulfill their chikan (perverted men with a fondness for copping feels on trains) fantasies without risk. The clubs provide realistic settings and simulated situations, where customers can act out their desires. Other popular settings include a doctor's office, a junior high school classroom, the corporate office, and, sometimes, the first class cabin of a JAL 747
A lot of these places are not so much for perverts or even people with a particular fetish, although that is a part of it, too, explains Berkeley-trained sociologist Lloyd Stevens, an authority on Japanese social psychology and human sexuality. Rather, they're places for the curious, and often men come here to have the experience. It's a thrill, a twist, a novelty, and the Japanese are very big on doing the newest, latest thing. For those who are serious about it, the illusion of make-believe provides a certain frisson.

But on a more calculating note, the image clubs function as a tool of traditional business practices by which relations are greased. As Dr. Stevens points out, A lot of high-ranking company executives see this as a form of entertainment and a treat for a client, a kind of bonus gift for executives of another company with whom they just concluded some very important business. It's basically very expensive entertainment and because it's expensive, unique, and prurient, it's a way to impress others, obviously in a rather titillating fashion.

The men who frequent image clubs may be lonely businessmen, thrill-seekers, or simply sukebe, but the women who work the trade are another lot altogether. It used to be that women working in the industry did so because they had to: they had few, if any, options to support themselves. But, nowadays, turnover is higher. Fewer women enter the trade for the longer term. Rather, more and more young women see part-time work as call-girls, in pink salons, or in image clubs as merely a way to earn a lot of money quickly, so that they can buy that expensive Chanel handbag, or pay the key money on that fashionable one-room mansion in Minami.

21-year-old Mariko is a junior at a well-known and expensive private women's college in Higashi-osaka City. I've been working part-time at an image club for about four months, she says matter-of-factly. It's good money. For only one night a week I can earn more money than if I was working forty hours at Mister Donut, or some stupid job like that. At first I was nervous. I had to dress up in a school uniform, and men would come in and pretend like they were my teacher. It was kind of scary, but I got used to it after the first few times. The jobs not so bad, plus it gives me a lot of time to meet my boyfriend. Please understand: I'm not a sukebe onna (sexually kinky woman). I'm futsu, just an average girl.

Indeed, Mariko doesn't look the part of someone working in the sex industry. She appears matronly and intelligent, while still effusing youthful purity. When she works, she is part of an illusion. That's all. And her customers buy it again and again. In the sex trade, as in many other spheres of contemporary Japanese life, image is everything