UFOs, boats and castles: Surreal photos of Japan’s most peculiar ‘love hotels’

Offering guests hourly rates and privacy, “love hotels” can be found across Japan. But as photographer François Prost documents, their architecture can be far from discreet.

Last year, French photographer François Prost spent hours browsing Google Maps to plan a road trip documenting Japan’s “love hotels” — establishments found across the country that offer hourly rates and, most importantly for guests, privacy. But as he embarked on his 3,000-kilometer (1,864-mile) journey, they proved impossible to miss. While some featured heart or lip-themed signage (or names like Hotel Passion, Hotel Joy or Hotel BabyKiss, to use a few examples from his trip), the hotels were most easily identified by playful architecture that is, counterintuitively, far from discreet. “You can see spaceships, boats and also a big whale, which is very childish somehow,” said Prost in a Zoom interview from France. “And many, many of them are castles,” he added of the facades of around 200 love hotels captured in his new photography series. While guests can rent rooms by the night, Japan’s love hotels also offer short-stay rates for “kyukei” or “rest.” They boomed after the country outlawed prostitution in 1958, a move that shuttered brothels and pushed the industry into alternative premises. Yet today, rather than being associated with sex work or infidelity, they primarily cater to couples living in small or shared family homes. “There is, of course, a little bit of prostitution, but it’s mainly people — especially young people and young couples — going there to have privacy,” said Prost. His looped route wound down through Honshu and Shikoku (the largest and smallest of Japan’s four main islands, respectively) before returning to the capital, Tokyo. “And nowadays, they’re not only for sex. They have also turned more to leisure (facilities), such as karaoke nightclubs.”