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In Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew last spring shuttered the Fireplace Club, a membership-only discothèque whose president bragged about its pickup potential. The club was closed, however, because it was a suspected haven for drug users. In Indonesia, President Suharto is so intent on setting a better example than hard-wenching Predecessor Sukarno that he and his wife see no love scenes in their screening room. When something saucy comes up, the projectionist puts his hand over the lens. Film censorship in Taiwan is somewhat more professional: censors last year found themselves forced to snip sexy bits out of 65% of the 237 foreign films screened in island theaters. Even scenes showing girls in Bikinis are taboo. The Communist Chinese are still more puritanical. Girls and boys alike wear near-identical jackets, trousers and caps, producing—unconsciously, of course—the unisex look. Peking's view of the latest in Western pop dancing: "vulgar and revolting actions" performed simply and solely by "class enemies."
Cultured Intrusion. Many Asian critics of what they consider Western sexual excesses are not at all worried about such abstract notions as morality. What does concern them is fidelity to their own cultural traditions. The Thai or Vietnamese businessman who openly keeps several "minor wives" or mistresses and regularly visits the local massage parlor frowns on miniskirts, not because they are morally objectionable but because they represent a cultural intrusion.
For that very reason the Japanese, almost alone among the Asians, seem unconcerned by the debate over public permissiveness. As the U.S. occupation showed, the Japanese have a way of transforming what looks like a cultural intrusion into something all their own. Thus, of the 487 movies produced in Japan last year, 267 were so-called "eroductions"—a Japanese neologism combining "erotic" and "production" and referring to adults-only features with a strong tinge of blue. The leading "ero-ducer," Koji Wakamatsu, has great plans in store: "What I must have," he says, "is a helicopter shot of the ground covered with nothing but naked women —all the way to the horizon." He might find the perfect location in central Tokyo. Palace Plaza, observers report, nightly turns into what can only be described as a sex park.