The woman was 22 when she began working in a “soap land” brothel in the renowned Yoshiwara red-light district of Tokyo.

She started to work in the sex industry in her teens and spent a total of 13 years there until she “retired” at the age of 32.

Now a 51-year-old single mother, Beniko, as she calls herself, recently published a book on red-light districts around Japan. She took the photographs herself.

As she says, she had her reasons.

Looking back, she had a sense, even during her early childhood in day nursery, that she didn’t belong.

Beniko, her nom de plume when posting, often felt like the odd one out. Having a low voice could have been a reason.

“You are like a man,” she was often told.

In elementary school, classmates picked on her. They would prick her back with a pencil and hurl water at her in the restroom. Her teachers were of no help in stopping the bullying, either. Before long, she became unable to attend school.

Beniko and her twin sister grew up in a cash-strapped family of four.

She attended senior high school but bolted after only six months, again because she didn’t get on with her classmates. Running out of options, she entered a vocational school for fine arts, as she had always been fond of drawing and painting.

FAINT HOPE OF ACCEPTANCE

Beniko was 19 when she spotted a flier in the mailbox at her home.

“Floor ladies wanted,” the handbill said. “Daily wages: 10,000 yen ($63), and more.”

As Beniko was having a tough time finding the money to pay the vocational school fees and purchase painting materials, she applied for the job and went for an interview. There, she learned the workplace was what is known in Japan as a “pink salon,” where sexual services are offered.

“Perhaps I could find acceptance in a world like this,” she told herself.

So, without further ado, she set foot in the sex industry, thinking that her life would get better. She went on to hop from one job to another until she ended up in the famous Yoshiwara red-light district in Tokyo. Until then, she didn’t know what Yoshiwara was famous for or where it was located.

By the time she was 32 years old, Beniko was worn out both mentally and physically, and “retired” as a sex worker. She later married, having met her husband through art activities, and they had a son.

The union, however, ended in divorce, leaving Beniko gripped by an overwhelming sense of solitude and hopelessness.

Eventually, though, things perked up as Beniko’s son became old enough to attend junior high school, leaving her time for herself. She began posting streetscape shots on social networking sites taken with her smartphone. In the early days as a single mother, Beniko worked all hours as a clerk to raise her son.

‘DON’T WANT ANY REGRETS’

Beniko came to feel a need to leave proof of her existence.

“Perhaps I could have lived a different life,” she often wondered. “I don’t want to end my life with regrets about my past.”

Her favorite photo subjects are the former sites of “yukaku” (licensed red-light districts of the past), as well as the so-called “aka-sen” (red-line) and “ao-sen” (blue-line) sex industry districts of the early postwar period.

Japan’s licensed prostitution system was abolished in 1946. After that, sex workers continued to operate under the tacit approval of the authorities in areas demarcated with red lines on maps.

Sex workers also operated illicitly in other areas, which were delineated with blue lines on maps. Both the red-line and blue-line districts ceased to exist when the Anti-Prostitution Law took effect in 1957.

Beniko is drawn to these areas because she can sense their decadent atmosphere, where people’s dreams once played out.

She bought a single-lens reflex camera and began snapping away.

Beniko decided to venture into YouTube territory after movie director Yasunari Izuma got in touch, having seen her posts. He advised her to start posting videos. She opted to show her face on the screen, made no secret of the fact she was once a sex worker and talked openly about her experiences in the sex industry.

Asked why she did so, Beniko said, “I wanted to share my background and thoughts so people will know why I am taking the pictures they are seeing.”

She came under a lot of criticism and was accused of “making your child unhappy,” but she also received a lot of favorable comments, which encouraged her.

PHOTO BOOK OF RED-LIGHT DISTRICTS

Beniko became an independent professional photographer in January last year.

She decided to publish a book of photos and called for donations on a crowdfunding platform, where she raised more than 4.5 million yen in only two months.

And late last year, she published “Beniko’s Exploratory Journey to ‘Iromachi’--Sites of Red-Light Districts in Japan,” her first serious collection of photos.

The book contains images of street architecture from former yukaku now on the verge of going out of existence, as well as photos of sex industry quarters of the Showa Era (1926-1989). Projected onto the photo subjects are Beniko’s own past and her thoughts and feelings.

So far, she has made the rounds of 100 or so red-light districts across Japan.

“Those districts are more than just suspicious places,” she said. “They have their own history. People continue to live in those environments today. I wish to shed light, to the extent I can, on scenes from such districts.”

And Beniko may be going, tonight as always, on another leg of her shooting rounds of red-light districts.

Beniko’s works can be purchased at her online gallery (https://benico.official.ec/; in Japanese only), which opened on April 25.

“She captures her photo subjects from a viewpoint that is not just about architectural beauty,” said Go Watanabe, the 46-year-old operator of Kastori Shobo, a bookstore in Tokyo’s Taito Ward that specializes in subjects related to red-light districts. “That sets her apart from other, conventional photographers.”

Watanabe continued: “Her works evoke various people of the past who lived in yukaku and other types of red-light districts, and that style of hers is so attractive.”