Yellow Taxi (1909)

[Joel S. Berson]

At 6/13/2005 12:55 PM, you wrote:
> > I can't find this meaning on Google and don't have a good slang dictionary
> > at my disposal...
> >
>"In 1990, the terms 'yellow cab' and 'resalovers' became current. The former
>[...] was a reference to Japanese girls in New Ysork, 'cruising and readily
>available.'" -- The Times magazine, 3 June 1995
>
>--Neil Crawford

Slightly earlier, googling:
(from the New School, NYC)
http://www.newschool.edu/gf/publicculture/backissues/pc14/kelsky.html

Public Culture. Spring 1994.  Volume 6, Number 3
"'Intimate Ideologies: Transnational Theory and Japan's 'Yellow Cabs'"
by Karen Kelsky
[This seems to be a description, linked from the table of contents, and the
article itself is not on-line.]

  In Japan, a "yellow cab" is not a taxi. Instead, "yellow cab" is a
pejorative label for young Japanese women who pursue short-term erotic
adventures abroad with foreign (especially African-American) men, because
they are allegedly "yellow" and "as easy to hail as a taxi." Japanese men
condemn these women, who themselves claim that the deficiencies of men in
Japan encourage them to search elsewhere.

Anthropologist Karen Kelsky discusses the yellow cab phenomenon in her
essay "Intimate Ideologies: Transnational Theory and Japan's 'Yellow Cabs'."


Joel