Shops generally operate under a "no-touch" policy.[2] The shops otherwise look like normal coffee shops (kissaten), rather than sex establishments, although they charge a premium price for the coffee.[1] Previously, most sex establishments, such as soaplands and pink salons, were staffed with professional prostitutes. No-pan kissa were a popular employment choice amongst some women because they paid well and generally required little sexual contact with the customers.[citation needed]
The first one to open was in Osaka in 1980.[3] Initially, all of them were in remote areas outside the traditional entertainment districts. Within a year, large numbers had opened in many more places, such as major railway stations.[4]
In the 1980s (the peak of the boom in these shops), many started to have topless or bottomless waitresses.[5] However, at this point, the number of such shops started to decline rapidly.[1]
In 1998, four officials at the Ministry of Finance were arrested and 112 disciplined for accepting bribes in the form of visits to a no-pan shabu-shabu restaurant in Shinjuku.[9]
^ abAllison, Anne (1994). Nightwork: sexuality, pleasure, and corporate masculinity in a Tokyo hostess club. University of Chicago Press. pp. 131–132. ISBN0-226-01487-8.
^Buruma, Ian (1984). Behind the mask: on sexual demons, sacred mothers, transvestites, gangsters, drifters and other Japanese cultural heroes. Pantheon Books. p. 111. ISBN0-394-53775-0.
^Bestor, Theodore C. (1989). Neighborhood Tokyo. Studies of the East Asian Institute. Stanford University Press. p. 42. ISBN0-8047-1797-4.
^Allison, Anne (2000). Permitted and prohibited desires: mothers, comics, and censorship in Japan. University of California Press. p. 170. ISBN0-520-21990-2.
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