Desperate as some of the businesses are, however, many still decline one type of customer: US military servicemen. The soap-land businesses that do admit Americans tend to pair them with older, more experienced women.
Okinawa has lived uneasily for decades with its huge American military presence. The controversies associated with such a huge deployment are legion; in , shortly after the start of the Vietnam war, 13, tons of poison gas including sarin and VX leaked from a storage base in Okinawa, causing residents to be evacuated and environmental damage that prevailed for years.
There have also been a series of recent allegations that Agent Orange was extensively stored there β claims that the US military has denied, following its own internal investigations. Pilots, sailors and often traumatised young marines rotate through the area every year from war zones in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Over the years they have racked up thousands of crimes, including a number of rapes that have caused outrage and triggered a fierce and increasingly uncompromising anti-base movement. In the most notorious case, three US military personnel took turns raping a year-old local girl on a deserted Okinawan beach in The men had debated paying for a prostitute before concluding it was too expensive and abducting their victim instead.
They later fled back to base, leaving her to die. In an attempt to ease the tensions, thousands of US marines will soon be moved to a base in Guam. Okinawans reacted with fury. But he argued the Japanese army was not unique. A populist right-winger, Mr Hashimoto tapped into a vein of anger at the US military presence on Okinawa.
