There is a certain sort of used clothing shop that has been booming in recent years.
The shop is one room in an apartment. There are two display cases, one on each side of the room, facing each other. There are mountains of underwear in every color. You begin to notice the 'abnormality' of the place. This is not a department where beautiful lingerie is sold. These items are all stained and soiled. In other words, they are used. Uniforms from famous middle and high school girls' schools are also on display. They are also dingy. This is place that sells items that should have been thrown away or sent to the cleaners.
Shorts (bloomers) which are used in physical education classes (known as Buruma in Japan), school uniforms, and sailor or middy clothes (known as sera) are in these stores. As a result these stores have come to be known as buru-sera shops.
The sellers are just common middle school and high school girls. They stop by on their way home, looking for a little pocket money. Some take out sundry items from their bags, while others take off their underwear on the spot. The clerks then check the amount of soiling and price them accordingly. Among other considerations are smell, and these items are ranked such as 'three day items,' 'one week items,' etc... An appropriate amount of residue of menstrual blood or excrement brings particularly high prices.
In the case of underwear 2000 yen ($20) is the general price. If there is a photo of the girl attached the price can more than double. The 'sailor' clothes are more expensive if they are from a school that is well known or from an 'uptown' girls school. There are some maniacs who will pay any price for a uniform from the Princess' home school.
The girls who come to sell are happy go lucky. "We just want money. This is an easy way to get it and it's better than working part time."
There is a never ending flow of white collar workers in their twenties and thirties and college students coming in to buy these unusual items.
The girls who come in to sell are not from poor families; on the contrary, they are from established households. It must be said that the monetary values of these "neo-yamatonadeshiko" (daughters of Japan) are severely warped. They have never had to endure anything and the carefree atmosphere has removed the boundaries of common sense. "Get money. Have fun. What's wrong with that?" is how it goes. This is the kind of value that is common to present day Japan.
The girls sell their bodies to get brand name items and have fun. "Matter" has overtaken "Soul." To state it plainly, this is bartering between bodies (matter) and brand name items (matter). There are such markets all over the place. They can sell their bodies as well as their underwear.
It goes without saying that the parents and adults who cannot say, "Cut out this foolishness!" are equally guilty. No one wants to think that selling underwear leads directly to prostitution. But the middle school girls in prostitution say, "I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm keeping it a secret from my parents, but I'm not harming anyone."
According to analysis by psychiatrists, the men who steal or buy or wear women's underwear view the underwear as a substitute for female genitals. This points to a lack of erotic communication between the sexes. There is also a great problem in the sudden increase in adults who buy this underwear and the sexual services of young girls.
Sexual perversion is related to the form of society. What must be pointed out is that there is something fundamentally wrong with this nation when 'buru-sera' shops flourish and 'neo-yamatondeshiko' are allowed to sell themselves without comment from their parents or older. It is a bartering session, one without a soul.
(10/24/94)
Yoshiro Mizuguchi, Editor in Chief of Monthly Women's Magazine "Fujin
Koron"