Mizu shōbai

Mizu-shōbai (水商売^?), literally the water trade, is the traditional euphemism for the nighttime entertainment business in Japan, provided by hostess or snack bars, bars, and cabarets. Kabuki-chō in Shinjuku, Tokyo is Japan's most famous area where one can patronize the water trade, as well as its more carnal counterpart fūzoku (風俗^?)—the sex industry composed of soaplands, pink salons, health, and image clubs.

While the actual origin of the term mizu-shōbai is debatable, it is likely the term came into use during the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868). The Tokugawa period saw the development of large bathhouses and an expansive network of roadside inns offering "hot baths and sexual release", as well as the expansion of geisha districts and courtesan quarters in cities and towns throughout the country. Bearing relation to the pleasure-seeking aspects of ukiyo (浮世, with its antithetical homophone 憂世 "sorrowful cycle of existence"), or "the floating world", mizu-shōbai is a metaphor for floating, drinking, and the impermanence of life, akin to the Western expression: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (I Cor. 15:32).

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