CARNAL NATION

Karaoke.

Karaoke in fetish wear—eight ex-pat internationals in leather, corsets, latex and evening gowns, crammed in a small imitation Chinese cave, just one of many such rooms stacked along and atop one another, singing loudly, horridly and enthusiastically to Cyndi Lauper and David Lee Roth.

Midori strikes a pose in her custom-made octopus costume. All photos courtesy of David Stetson.

Yes, that's how the evening began for me at the 2009 Japan Fetish Ball in Tokyo.

The Japan Fetish Ball, organized by the Tokyo Kink Society, is an annual European-style party where fantasy dress, fetish fashion and serious clubbing come together. It's a heck of a party and it totally measures up with some of the best fetish balls I've partied at in North America and Europe. What's amazing is that Charm, the party organizer, has never been to any of these major parties I'm comparing his event to. He decided to create the sort of party that he wanted to go to—and organized it from scratch.

I've been meaning to attend this for years, but there always seemed to be a schedule conflict. Miraculously our schedules coincided this year, so I blocked out the time and booked the flight. I also made sure to schedule several days before and after for more thorough research of the sexual subcultures of Japan to add to my "Pink Japan: Contemporary Sex Culture" presentation.

Sometimes there's too much of a good thing—even with filthy fun pervy parties. Regardless of how fabulous a party is, after several years of going to the same event folks can get a bit jaded and take it for granted. From time to time I'll skip the big gold standard events, such as International Mr. Leather or Torture Garden. I might take a break or drop into something totally new to me. This year I skipped Folsom Street Fair and the London Fetish Weekend and kept it fresh by dashing off to the Manifest Party in Copenhagen and Japan Fetish Ball.

Then there's Mom. My mom lives there so it's a good idea to visit from time to time. Of course, I dress a little differently when I go to see her.

Back to the karaoke cave full of off-key foreigners…

Moments later, we're striding brazenly down the winding alleys of a rather seedy entertainment quarter, making a spectacle of ourselves. Given the general state of inebriation the locals have already achieved, it was just another Saturday night after all; we were just another set of pink elephants dancing on by. They laugh at us and stumble towards other bars.

Turn the corner onto a main thoroughfare and soon we're standing before yet another non-descript high-rise in Tokyo. A throng of colorful human oddities mill about waiting for the party to open at quarter to midnight. Eight floors above, Christon Café drips with romantic Catholic fetishism only achievable by a non-Christian culture filled with Lolita manga-reading population besotted with a goth Liberace dream of the Vatican. It's just one of many trippy theme restaurants thriving in Tokyo. Christon Café, with its lush over-the-top velvet-covered Virgin Mary and gargoyle aesthetics, turns out to be the perfect location for a bang-up lively fetish ball.

The 500 or so sexy creatures of the night, dancing their asses off to the innovative DJs, dressed for the occasion. Of course the Japan Fetish Ball is a strict-dress-code perv event, rare in Japan, so nowhere would you find the ubiquitous blue "salary man" suit. Normally, punters in suits and workers in fetish-lite garb populate much of the publicly accessible kink venues in Japan. JFB strives to create more of a freaky masquerade environment. Surprisingly, Tokyo is a megalopolis lacking in anything resembling an established fetish fashion district, as there are in London or San Francisco. But with a thriving CosPlay subculture, animé-steeped aesthetics, and deconstructionalist fashion intuition among the rebel edge minority, the partying pervs had no problem looking good.There were many goth girls and boys, futuristic Asian warrior types and even a few full transformation dolls. And one Octopus from San Francisco. (Yes, that was me in the special cephalopod outfit crafted by Polymorphe of Montreal.)