Interview with Okubo Park prostitute arrested for stealing from foreign customer

One of the biggest stories over the summer was the arrest of four Okubo Park prostitutes for defrauding foreign men. The women seemed to encapsulate all the elements of the tachinbo (streetwalker) moral panic: desperate girls, swiped wallets, horny tourists, and addiction to host clubs.

With claims that they had made hundreds of thousands of dollars over two years and that cases of fraud with customers were on the rise, these four sparked a febrile reaction from netizens, who nicknamed them the Four Heavenly Kings of tachinbo (after the Buddhist protectors of the world).

Shueisha Online managed to get an interview with one of them, a 21-year-old unemployed woman they call A-san (Ms A) (though previously identified as Miyu Aoyagi in the July news reports), back in late August, and it has gone online now, just days after police arrested her again.

The woman, from Shinjuku, was arrested by Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Security Division on September 18 for on suspicion of theft for allegedly stealing cash from a foreign man’s wallet at a hotel in Shinjuku.

She was originally nabbed on July 22 under the Anti-Prostitution Ordinance, but was released without charge. This seemd to irk Ms A. “I’m disappointed that no charges were filed against me.”

Nonetheless, she claims she was innocent. “When I was arrested, I wasn’t prostituting myself. I was just there because a friend had called me. I think I was probably being targeted and chosen as a warning to the media to capture my arrest. I was surprised when I was suddenly arrested, but the police told me I wasn’t doing anything serious and released me after 48 hours.”

She found her two days in detention durable. “The only difficult thing was not being able to use my smartphone.”

“I did engage in prostitution, and I knew it was a crime, so I thought it was only natural that I would be arrested and reported. But I never committed any fraud or theft.”

The police were, however, investigating her again for a more serious charge allegedly committed before the interview. She denies stealing.

“There are other girls who commit fraud and theft, but I’m not like that. In fact, I was only doing ordinary prostitution, so I wasn’t charged with fraud and was quickly released by the police.

I also saw news reports about fraud and theft targeting foreigners and the elderly, but I think that was simply because I looked like an anime character with my flashy hair and bad makeup, which often appealed to nerdy foreigners, and they would talk to me, so the story was exaggerated.

I think the elderly people also found it easy to talk to me, seeing my youthful appearance, which reminded them of their grandchild. I might exchange a wink if those types of customers were passing by. But I never stole money from their wallets or took exorbitant amounts that I didn’t agree with.”

Another detail that got a lot of attention in the summer was the existence of a LINE group for streetwalkers in which they shared information and photos of undercover cops. A-san apparently was the one who made the group, which includes 26 sex workers.

“I was certainly one of the original members of the group. However, at first it felt more like a bulletin board, with people simply posting things like, ‘I’m bored today,’ or ‘Today’s meal handed out by the nonprofit is so and so.’ It’s true that about a year ago, when plainclothes police patrols became more frequent [in Okubo], people started posting photos of police officers as a warning, but I wasn’t the only one doing it. That doesn’t mean we all felt a sense of camaraderie or anything. We were just posting because we were bored.”

And did she actually make over ¥100 million in just two years?

“In reality, I made about ¥90 million yen in the three years since I started prostitution. But I only have about ¥200,000 yen left. I just kept making and spending.”

Is she worried about the future? Apparently she is now because her photo and real name are available online following her arrest.

“When I found out that my name and face had been made public, I decided to quit streetwalking. I didn’t want to continue a life that required selling my body. More than anything, I was so afraid of what people would think that I couldn’t leave the house for a while, and I couldn’t even go near Kabukicho.”

But it seems you can take the girl out of Okubo but you can’t take Okubo out of the girl. She returned to the park several times in the second half of August to earn some cash through tachinbo.

“Even on days when I’m not in Kabukicho, people would make fake posts claiming I was there again doing tachinbo. I tried confronting the supposed posters, but they’d just dodge my questions or run away.”

She claims that she wants to go straight, but knows the difficulties she faces due to her online fame.

“Now that my face and real name are out in the open, I feel like I’ll never get a job interview. I really want to get a decent job at a con cafe or something. They say rumors last for 75 days, so I think I just need to wait a little longer for the dust to settle.”

As might be expected, she comes from a somewhat troubled background as the middle child of three siblings, all with different fathers, She was told just to finish her compulsory education, then a job after junior high school.

“In the end, I managed to go to high school, but my father wouldn’t pay for events like school trips. It’s what they call financial domestic violence. From high school onwards, I was drowning in part-time jobs, working part-time until the early hours, and even started doing compensated dating with sugar daddies for sex.”

After graduating high school, she worked at an after-school care facility for about three months.

“I actually wanted to go to university, but my parents would only let me study nursing or education, and because our household income was high, I couldn’t get a scholarship, so I gave up. I just wanted to get away from my parents’ supervision, so I secretly started working part-time at a pink salon [a type of brothel] and a delivery health service [call girl service], and once I had saved up a certain amount of money I quit my job at the after-school care center. After that, I worked at a variety of con cafes and delivery health services, while also going to mencon [men’s concept cafes] and host clubs. After I found a host I liked, I started spending money on him.”

It’s difficult to go straight when there’s always the temptation of easy money.

“Right now, I’m helping out with an NPO that supports girls who make a living by prostituting themselves in Kabukicho. I talk to girls who are standing there crying because they don’t have enough money to give to hosts, and I listen to their stories. But that only makes me ¥3,000 a day. So I continue to meet up with the wealthy sugar daddies I’ve made connections with until now.”

And now she’s part of life in Shinjuku, she can’t escape its clutches. “All my friends and communities are in Shinjuku, so it’s impossible not to come here.”

During the interview, she apparently showed little remorse for her actions, just frustration at her plight, and then she was arrested again two weeks later.

The police and media has tried to portray the situation in Okubo Park as stemming from predatory host clubs, which get teens into debt, for which the quick fix is having sex with randos for ¥20,000 a pop. Our take is that does happen and is a problem, but does not explain the scale of the problem, which must surely relate to larger socioeconomic conditions.

Foreign men apparently account for the majority of clients for some sex workers, effectively turning Kabukicho into a destination for sex tourists.