Hanazono Room

Hanazono Room (Japanese: はなぞのルーム), officially No. 136 Hanazono Room, is an apartment room with an indoor swimming pool located in the uppermost floor of the Sun Mall Crest condominium in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Operated by P-Studio,^[1] the room is an infamous filming location for many pornographic videos with themes of aquaphilia and poolside intercourse.^[2] Due to its frequent association with Japanese pornography, Hanazono Room and its pool became popularly known as "The Pool" (例のプール, Rei no Pūru, "the one pool") or "That Pool" (あのプール, Ano Pūru) in internet subcultures.^[3][4]

"The Pool"

Sun Mall Crest
San Mōru Kuresuto
Sun Mall Crest in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, where the Hanazono Room is located at the top floor
Alternative names	No. 136 Hanazono Room Hanazono Room The Pool That Pool
General information
Status	Completed
Type	Mixed-use
Address	Hanazono-dori Road, 1-19-10 Shinjuku, Shinjuku District
Town or city	Tokyo
Country	Japan
Coordinates	35°41′22.6″N 139°42′46.7″E
Opened	1988 (37 years ago) (1988)
Owner	Sun Mall Crest
Dimensions
Other dimensions	Penthouse floor area: 614 m2 (6,610 sq ft; 186 tsubo)
Technical details
Floor count	10
Known for	Pornographic film production

Location

Sun Mall Crest is located on Hanazono-dori (Hanazono Road), at the address 1-19-10 Shinjuku.^[5] It is across the street from Hanazono Elementary School and is accessible from Shinjuku-gyoemmae Station.

History

Although the Sun Mall Crest building was built and completed in 1988,^[5] the No. 136 Hanazono Room and its leisure pool were actually built sometime around the year 2000, when Japan was recovering from the effects of the asset price bubble burst in the 1990s. It became an apartment unit for actor Kōji Ishizaka,^[3] although he claimed that he lived just a floor below and the room actually belonged to another actor, Kon Ichikawa. Both actors have long since moved out of their units (Ichikawa died in 2008).

At some point following their tenancies, P-Studio acquired the room and began renting it out to studio firms nearby. Due to its proximity to Japanese gravure and pornographic studios, and owing to their smaller budgets resulting in limited choices for shooting locations, beginning in 2004^[6] and by the mid- and late 2000s the indoor pool at Hanazono Room became frequently used as background for swimsuit modeling photo shoots and low-budget pornographic films.^[7]

With stills from pornographic films of the Hanazono Room pool being circulated around the Japanese internet by the late 2000s, it became known as "that pool" or "the pool" in Japanese internet circles, particularly 2ch and Niconico.^[7] Not long after, news outlets also began referring to the pool as "that pool".^[8] As the pool became popular in local media, P-Studio itself eventually began referring to it as "The Pool". At some time during 2011, several segments from the tokusatsu drama Kamen Rider Fourze also featured the pool, resulting in it garnering even more fame.^[3] With the massive spread of Japanese pornographic films on the internet from the early 2010s, "The Pool" earned a global following and became a well-known internet meme and gag, as parts of the global internet community gradually familiarized themselves with the Hanazono Room's unique layout in relation to its cult-like status on the web, specifically regarding Japanese pornography.^[3]

After almost two decades of pornographic filming, on August 11, 2020, pornographic studios stopped using the Hanazono Room pool, deeming it to be "virtually prohibited" for adult video shoots. This was after P-Studio announced that they would drastically increase the operating and maintenance fees for the pool due to the need to disinfect it of "bodily fluids" from pornographic shoots, placing the operating expenses out of reach for pornographic studios. However, the pool is still being used for gravure modelling photo shoots and promotional trailers of pornographic films not otherwise taking place in the pool.^[2]

See also

• Pornography in Japan
• Chronology of adult videos in Japan
• San Francisco Armory, another pornographic filming site