The Girls of Japan

Face It, reader-san. Ever since you read ShOgun, you've wondered if Mariko were a figment of James Clavell's imagination. Do such women really exist? Images of the tea ceremony, of courage, of grace, of sexual cleverness, the combination of shyness and incredible technique lurk on the edges of your private erotic movies. Last October, we sent our own team of barbarians to the Land of the Rising Sun. Not since Anjin-san was tossed upon those alien shores had there been such a collision of cultures. Associate Photo Editor Jeff Cohen, Staff Photographer Richard Fegley and stylist Jane Friedman had one goal: to scout out the beauties of Mayako Murata (above) is an aspiring actress. We caught her between takes of a samurai epic, reclining in a one-acre rice paddy in metropolitan Kyoto. Natsuko Kann (above right) is a graduate student at the Tokyo University of Art and Design. When not perfecting her craft as a painter, she travels or does modeling for the Japanese edition of Playboy.

Michiko Yazawa (near right) is a Bunny at the Playboy Club of Tokyo. She has studied the classic Japanese art of flower arranging and handicrafts. She hopes someday to open a flower shop. Yuki Ogura (far right) graduated from Tokyo Gakugei University. Now she is a schoolteacher whose hobbies include "driving, studying Buddhist statues, skiing."

Tattoo you? Kumiko Kimura, a piano teacher from Tokyo, reclines in front of four Japanese men who are evidently into needlepoint. Their tattoos cost more than 4,000,000 yen (about $16,000) and required a year under the needle. We think you can say they proved their point. At far left, showgirls perform at the Nichigeki Music Hall, also in Tokyo.

Ran Shina came from Yokohama, accompanied by a chaperon. Before the shooting ended, both were at play in the bath (below left). That's Ran (left) and Michiko Suzuki (right) a-scrub in the tub. Kaoru Ishida (below right) is a Tokyo-based actress who has appeared in commercials and on 11 PM--the Japanese equivalent of The Tonight Show. the Orient. To do so, they had to adjust to a new etiquette. They found themselves being called Cohen-san, Fegley-san and Jane-san ("The Japanese had a bit of trouble with Friedman-san," said our good-looks ambassador). Our intrepid trio found the experience memorable, quite unlike past trips for such features as the Girls of the Big Ten or The Girls of Kokomo. (You mean Kokomo is not a suburb of Osaka?) Cohen-san filed the following report: "Quite often, we would stop girls in the street and, through an interpreter, ask if they would like to pose for the American Playboy. They did not react like American women. There was no skepticism or fear. They weren't snobbish or standoffish. There was an innate trust among people. In America, when someone says that he is from Playboy and that he wants you to take your clothes off, the first reaction is distrust. The women I approached were almost kind. They are aware of Playboy--we've long published a Japanese edition. Sometimes the girls would take my number and say, 'Let me call you at five o'clock.' Then they would call and decline. It was their way of saving me embarrassment. They did not turn me down in the street, in front of my associates." Cohen-san was somewhat disconcerted by the way the Japanese interpret shyness: "At first, I thought they were incredibly withdrawn. When we did something funny, they (text concluded on page 172) Girls of Japan (continued from page 100) would hide their laughter behind their hands, the way Southern girls used to use fans. But that shyness has nothing to do with shame about their bodies. When it came to taking off their clothes, there was absolutely no problem. The Japanese are quite used to public nudity. They have grown up with the custom of communal baths and they are proud of their bodies. There are no fat people in Japan, except for sumo wrestlers. The Japanese are incredibly fit. We had some amazing sessions. We took one girl who had never posed before to a public park. We wanted to get her picture in front of a famous shrine. She just took off her clothes, right there, in the middle of the street. There were tour buses, little kids, shoppers, the works. Imagine that happening in Times Square!"

Cohen suggested that there might be a second reason for the ease with which these girls did what might be considered outrageous in America. "It was their sense of commitment, duty. If someone promised to arrive at a shooting at five in the morning, she would be there. If girls said they could work from 12 to four, they were ours for four hours. On the other hand, if you were in the middle of a shooting and the time ran out, that was it. Imagine looking at a sunset. There's a rainbow. A snow-white crane is moving across the horizon. You have the shot of a lifetime. If it was four o'clock, the girl would get up and start to pack. In Japan, they give you their best for the allotted time. Then they go out to play."

We asked Cohen if he had run into any difficulties. "We had a lot of problems with the weather. There was the day we tried to shoot in a typhoon. The wind was blowing with such violence that the girl couldn't even stand up."

Uh, Cohen-san: In America, a typhoon would not be described as "weather." It would be described as news, or a natural disaster.

"We packed up and went into town for sushi," Cohen resumed. "The chef invited us into the kitchen. There was an aquarium filled with fish. The chef chose our supper. The fish was flopping all over the table. One assistant held down the head, another held down the tail. The chef sharpened a knife, then, in one stroke, removed a filet. The assistant flipped over the fish and he sliced off the other flank. You can't get it fresher than that. I watched him chop it up into sushi and sashimi--you know, with rice and seaweed. It was terrific." It may be minutes before Cohen-san is ready for another Girls of Japan feature.