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Mama-sanThe term mama-san or mamasan refers to a woman who works in a supervisory role in certain sex work related establishments in East Asia, typically bars in countries such as Thailand or the Phillippines. To at least some extent this can be considered the local equivalent of a pimp or madam, although the conventions of bar fine prostitution in Asia are quite different from those of either street or brothel prostitution in the United States. The analogous term papa-san can be used to refer to a man in a similar supervisory role, such as is often found in massage parlors in Thailand. It can also refer to a style of chair. The term originally comes from Japanese, where it is a term for a woman who works as a supervisor at a bar, nightclub, brothel, or similar business. The suffix -san is a polite honorific attached to a person's name or title. The familiarity with the term by U.S. soldiers in Japan after WWII probably has had some influence in its spread to other Southeast Asian countries. It should be noted that the term mama-san in Japanese is emphatically not a polite reference to a mother, and should never be used as such. Some Japanese children today call their mother mama but this is relatively uncommon, and the term does not persist into adulthood. The proper term to refer to a Japanese mother would be okaa-san.
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