Customer Reviews

Love Hotels: The Hidden Fantasy Rooms of Japan

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am of two minds on this book. On one hand, it is full of great fantasy-land photos representing a slice of Japan that I love; the bizarre, the outrageous, the unashamed blending of cute/sexy/violent and anything else that can be thrown into the mix. On the other hand, this book completely misrepresents what love hotels are, the purpose they serve in Japanese society, and pretty much every other aspect of this unique aspect of Japanese life. Anyone reading this book, then going to a love hotel in Japan, would be sorely disappointed.

I lived in Japan for many years, and during that time I went to many, many love hotels. The vast majority are nothing like these photographs, and the themed rooms are actually quite rare. If you notice, most of these photographs are from the same couple of establishments, Hotel Adonis, Hotel Loire and Hotel Snowman (not the actual name of the hotel, which is really Gang Snowman), because they are the few out of the thousands of hotels that offer these kinds of rooms. Most love hotels are...somewhat boring in décor. They are nice rooms, with lots of services such as free movies, karaoke and a big bathtub, which are usually cheaper to stay in than regular hotels. Yes, there are some outrageous love hotels, like the ones in this book, and those are the kind worth seeking out because they are so much fun, but they are hardly the norm.

The introduction to this book, by Natsuo Kirino, author of the book Out, is depressing and also misrepresentative of love hotels in Japan. She would have you believe that they are some sort of seedy place where men live out their dark fantasies while cheating on their wives and abusing women in general. In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. Oh yes, there are those who use them as "cheating hotels", but all of my Japanese friends and co-workers, teachers and chefs, young and old, used love hotels without embarrassment. Why? Well, for one thing because Japanese houses are small, with thin walls and families often sleeping in the same room together. Privacy is a valuable commodity. For another reason, they are just fun. It is nice to get out of the house, out of the routine, and go with your partner and indulge in a love hotel for the night. People would chat at work at which hotels they liked, in the same way people swapped good restaurants. My wife and I stayed at a great love hotel for our anniversary, complete with private roof-top pool, huge bed and massive bath. It was fantastic.

On another note, in the introduction Kirino calls Japan "a land without religion" and blames that for the moral failing of the country. Japan is indeed a "land without Christianity", but that is not the same thing as being "without religion". I was quite shocked at how poorly she represented her native country, and with such spite and venom she discussed the Japanese people. I dearly hope no one takes her opinion as indicative of the country and its populace.

So, in other words, great photos and a nice look at the more bizarre and fringe love hotels, but no one should take this as representative of the industry or the country as a whole. Without Kirino's introduction, this would have been a much better book, buts its inclusion drags it down to a sad and misinformed level.

I had only seen a few of these images when I bought "Love Hotels" and was thrilled with how many thrills and surprises the book itself offers. This is a tremendous body of work and a wonderful introduction to the photography of Misty Keasler, who has established herself as an artist of real humanity and complexity. "Love Hotels" is a gorgeously-designed book that is ostensibly about the loaded subject of Japanese hotel rooms used only for sex. In these delicious photos, Keasler goes much deeper than the simple eye-candy of these odd spots, and leads us on an exploration of this strange expression of a society known to be fairly sexually repressed. She communications a number of emotions -- some humorous, some sad, some disturbing -- that all reflect her longtime interest in how a particular public or private space illustrates the lives that occupy it. Much of Keasler's other work concerns children living in orphanages or garbage dumps, but no matter what the project, it always returns to place, and here she has found one of the world's most fascinating places. It's a great ride. Highly recommended.

The pictures are fantastic, and the "notes" written by the various couples range from pathetically sad to highly entertaining. Be sure to read the forward or you won't understand the significance of Love Hotels in general. Makes an interesting conversation starter if left lying around on the coffee table!

Japan's infamous love hotels are a cultural art form. This is not a guidebook to the erotic world of Japan. Neither is it a collection of pornographic photos of hot Asian chicks and where to find them. This is a book of fine art photographs of the interiors of hotel rooms. There is not a photograph of a live person in the entire volume. The rooms in these hotels appear that they were designed by the animation artists of Disney. I kept expecting to find a "Pirates of the Caribbean" room. I had to settle for a room entitled "Pirate Room." It was pictured near an aquarium motif with the name "Underwater Room."
Each of the rooms shown in the book appears like an individual cell out of animated film. These rooms definitely represent individual rides in a pleasure park for adults. In most of the beautifully reproduced color photographs the viewer has to look carefully in order to tell if the room really exists or is just a skillfully done cartoon painting of a room. While every detail of each room seems almost like an unused exhibit in a museum, the one tip-off that the scene is real is that the beds shown in each location look like they had just been sloppily made. The spreads are usually slightly rumpled as if the maid was in a terrific hurry to get done before the photographer arrived. Another feature of the beds is that almost every bed has some form of chains with leather cuffs or other type of restraint in each corner of the bed and on top of the bed spreads. Many of the rooms also have S&M restraints hanging from the ceilings or attached to the walls or on crosses against the walls. A simple list of some of the picture titles for the Osaka hotel rooms says much about the content of the pictures. "Igloo Waiting Area", "Naughty Nurse Play Area," "Hello Kitty S&M Room," "Prison Cell," "Alien Abduction Play Area," "Subway Room," " Disco Ball," "Spider Room," and "Bondage Bathroom." There are many more amazing rooms with amazing names. There seems no lack of kinkiness and kitsch in these first-class establishments.
The photographer has a real gift for capturing the sensuality of these love hotel room designs. If sex is mostly above the neck, then the creators of these fantasy adventures are true erotic geniuses. The photographs are straightforward and amazing. It's difficult to show people living and loving without showing any people. The photographer has a real talent for recognizing the skill of the interior designers of these fantasies.
If the reader wishes to see real people working in the near-cousins of these Japanese cartoon fantasy worlds, Joan Sinclair has done a wonderful job with an entirely different approach in her book "Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex Clubs." Since non-Japanese aren't usually allowed in these clubs, Sinclair's book is even more amazing and will be eye opening to any western audience. The American equivalent to the book "Love Hotels" is Timothy Hursley's "Brothels of Nevada." His architectural studies of the legal Brothel Industry occasionally show a real person within their gaudy architectural fantasy world created mostly through a system of combining over-sized trailers into sexual playgrounds.

The photographs in this book are wonderful and provocative. However, it should be made clear to readers that the rooms in the book are not rooms most Japanese people will ever see.

A fun collection of photos from love hotels throughout Japan. There is such a variety of different themes for love hotel rooms that this book, of necessity, can only contain a small fraction of examples. So after looking through it, I mainly felt I wanted more photographs of more rooms at more love hotels.

I kind of feel bad giving this book 3 stars, but i think there could definitely be improvement. The variety of photographs seems huge at first, but after flipping through the book a couple times it's a bit repetitive.

I did enjoy the introduction as it gives a unique view of japan and the love hotel industry. Obviously there are many different opinions on why japans culture is the way it is and i enjoy them all whether they are right or wrong. This book has a 4-5 page insight into sex in japan.

Another section i really liked about the book where the customer questionnaires. Some where amusing, others where perplexing, but all were enjoyable. I think this section could definitely be expanded.

The two things that i feel would make this book a 5 star book are more writing and more photographic variety. As far as writing i would like expanded captions for photographs to help explain the rooms a bit more in detail. For photographic variety i would love more close up shots of small details and maybe more artistic shots. The pictures in this book tend to be more "real estate" than artsy. Even though i gave the book three stars and even though i think it could be improved i would recommend this book to anyone interested in japans sex culture, or just the odder aspects of japan.

Behind the scenes tour of Japanese culture. Large book with fine detail photos. Misti lives in Dallas and exhibits in local galleries, like Photos Do Not Bend (PDNB). 20+" prints are fantastic. If you love a pic from the book, should follow up to buy a print.

What separates LOVE HOTELS from other works of its genre is that Misty Keasler has taken 80 or so giant photos of rooms from various Love Hotels in Japan, and none of the photos contains a living person. This is the Keasler technique. There are no living persons within her rooms. Though there is something terribly voyeuristic within all of us that wants to catch some of what we hope are the morbidly depraved acts of Love Hotelers as they do dirty things in rooms containing Hello Kitty dolls, over-sized snowmen and various assortments of creatures one might only see at a carnival, she does not reveal the subjects of her rooms. We are left with the objects that they ephemerally possessed. What is so pleasing about Misty Keasler's work and technique, however, is that she very much captures the ghosts of the people who have haunted her rooms. We are given the chance through Misty Keasler to peer into Dante's Hell. She is our Virgil, and the stories that these ghosts tell us through the rooms where the beds are not yet cold are often so more sad than sensual. This is also what makes her rooms so unbelievably beautiful. The journey Keasler takes us on is enhanced by the book's diaries left inside the rooms from Love Hotelers who inexplicably leave messages for future guests. These messages reveal amazing conflicts in the souls of hotel guests as they struggle with cheap love and even cheaper sex in hotel rooms that are designed for lust. LOVE HOTELS is an incredible body of work. Readers will find it difficult not to return again and again to the photographs to search for new ghosts who reveal themselves in different corners of each room. I very much recommend this book!

Quite honestly in a frantic book buying binge I ordered this book thinking it was a Lonely Planet guide to Love Hotels. Its definitely NOT. I agree that its 75% my fault for not reading the reviews, but the book`s content does not justify the steep price. The book includes a bunch of pictures from ancient times ->2005 of dodgy hotels in mainly Osaka and Kobe. You`d think they`d give you an updated version with the latest sexiest/weirdest places for your viewing pleasure. You`d also think that they would spend a lot more time in Tokyo (maybe Kawasaki, Shinjuku, Gotanda etc). The dairy section in the middle of the book was good for a couple of laughs but overall I recommend you save your money, surf over to Google and do an image search for " Tokyo Love Hotels". The photos there are a lot more eye-catching.