The term was spread to Japan by Shōko Ieda's 1991 book Yellow Cab, and was quickly appropriated by the Japanese media as a way of sensationalizing and censuring the women's behaviour.
[3][4][5] Women described as "yellow cabs" can often be observed in so-called "border regions" consisting of highly transient, ethnically and culturally mixed populations.
One argument analyses the phenomenon in terms of consumer patterns: the women are in the financially superior position due to the strength of the Japanese yen and their own disposable income, and are using their power to purchase sex; one such woman even described her foreign boyfriends as "pets".
[8][9] The opposing argument puts the phenomenon in the context of a larger "romanticization and eroticization" of the West and specifically of English speakers by Japanese women, and asserts that it is actually the Western men in such relationships who have power.
[16] The group continued to be active until late 1993; they were later criticised for their "legacy of denial and disavowal of the possibility of Japanese women's racialized desire for foreign men".