Love Hotels

Description

No other country has an institution quite like the Japanese love hotel: Hotels where couples can rent heavily decorated rooms by the hour for amorous liaisons, these spaces are steeped in fantasy; and rooms cater to diverse tastes through elaborate decor ranging from simulated subway cars to religious bondage, with much kink in between. These brash rooms are fascinating in themselves, but also present a window on to a very classified aspect of this society. In eighty revealing photographs, Misty Keasler creates an astonishing document of sex and romance, public and private space in Japan. It includes a foreword by best-selling author Natsuo Kirino, and an essay by photo curator Rod Slemmons - as well as passages from hotel guest books, which lend additional humor and context to these haunting room portraits.

Misty Keasler regularly contributes to Texas Monthly and Dwell magazine. She lives in Dallas. Natsuo Kirino is the author of Out, which was a recipient of the Grand Prix for Crime Fiction in Japan and one of its major literary awards, the Naoki Prize. She lives in Tokyo. Rod Slemmons is director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago.