ABSTRACT
Setting aside an analysis of the environmental issues of the love hotel, which in Chapters 1-3 revealed its urban, built and interior characteristics, there is much to be gleaned from a more semiotically driven cultural analysis of the ways in which love hotels have been classified, named and referred to in Japan. Just as the love hotel has moved through a series of marked stages in its physical development, both internally and externally, there has been a parallel series of shifts in its generic naming, and also in terms of the specific names and themes given to individual love hotels.
