<jats:p>In Japan during the Edo period (1603-1868), the shogunate heaped together all things immoral -- gambling, theater, prostitution, bars – into districts separate from the rest of the city in an attempt to both provide and control licentious activities. These areas came to be known collectively as the “floating world,” a heady terrain of sex and art, an island of hedonism in a balancing act with strict patriarchal morality and social code. Tokyo’s district, called Yoshiwara, or “happy fields,” was the most famous. In Lost in Translation and demonlover , Tokyo is depicted as a floating world in the here and now, a contemporary mecca of fleeting pleasures disconnected from the West’s heavy-handed morality, from meaningful relationships, from Christian guilt.</jats:p>