Broadly, it includes the television, theater, and movie industries, but more narrowly, it can refer to those who work in businesses that serve alcohol or provide sex.
Bars, cabarets, health, hostess bars, image clubs, pink salons and soaplands are all part of the mizu shōbai; though they are not sex workers, geisha and kabuki actors are traditionally considered part of the mizu shōbai as well.
[3] The Tokugawa period saw the development of large bathhouses and an expansive network of roadside inns offering "hot baths and sexual release",[3] as well as the expansion of geisha districts and courtesan quarters in cities and towns throughout the country.
In the entertainment business, income depends on a large number of fickle factors like popularity among customers, the weather, and the state of the economy; success and failure change as rapidly as the flow of water.
The Nihon Zokugo Daijiten,[5] on the other hand, notes that the term may derive from the expression doromizu-kagyō (泥水稼業, lit.