Interview with a freelance sex worker in Osaka

The online edition of Weekly Friday has published a fascinating interview with a Japanese sex worker with an enterprising streak.

Anri Saito (a pseudonym) is apparently a 36-year-old resident of Osaka who works as a freelance sex worker, meaning she isn’t affiliated with any specific outcall agency or brothel.

Instead of being on a particular establishment’s roster, she filed the necessary business registration, rented an office, and hired a driver all by herself. Now that’s what we call the famously mercantile Osaka spirit.

She handles everything from attracting clients and managing bookings to providing services and filing tax returns. After expenses, all the revenue are hers.

“I specialize in masochism-oriented services,” Anri shares with the tabloid in her interview. “The standard rate is ¥50,000 for 90 minutes, with tips extra. Aside from expenses, the rest is my pay. My monthly income is around ¥1.5 million.”

How did she get started in this line of work?

“After I enrolled in a prestigious private university in the Kansai region, I discovered that my parents had a massive amount of debt. Perhaps out of pride, they had kept it hidden from relatives and from me. It meant that my tuition payments stopped.”

Anri had a part-time job at a local okonomiyaki restaurant since high school, but the hourly wage was nowhere near enough to cover university tuition.

“I considered working at a hostess club, but daily wages wouldn’t have been enough to keep up. I couldn’t rely on my parents, so my only options were dropping out, taking a leave of absence, or working in the sex industry.”

She chose the latter, initially working for an outcall service (euphemistically called delivery health in Japan).

“Once I’d saved enough for tuition, I took a break from the sex industry. If I needed extra cash for something, I’d do a few outcall sessions on an ad hoc basis.”

She later switched to a men’s aesthetic salon, which is another euphemism for a type of brothel that nominally offers massages and beauty treatments, but actually extra services. Anri found this kind of service more satisfying because she would take the lead.

“Salons are completely driven by the women. I could take the lead during the sessions, and for the first time, I thought, hey, maybe I’m actually good at this.”

That said, she did embark upon a regular career after graduating.

“I became a school nurse and married a fellow teacher, but things didn’t work out. After the divorce, I moved to a different prefecture to continue teaching. However, to work as a teacher in a new prefecture, I had to take the teacher recruitment exam all over again. While studying at a prep school offering courses for the recruitment exam, I started working at a men’s salon again to earn some extra pocket money.”

One of her clients was really into masochism and he recommended that she work at a famous masochism-themed salon back in Kansai.

“I had started to sense that I had a talent for playing the sadist role in such games, so I transferred to that salon and became the number-one earner within a year.”

Before she knew it, Anri had become a full-time sex worker as a dominatrix. She found the process of earning money enjoyable, and her dream for the future was to achieve financial independence and retire early). Her monthly income exceeded ¥2 million, which is more than some CEOs earn in Japan.

But while impressive, Anri knew it wasn’t enough to earn financial independence and was also unhappy about the salon’s instructions not to file tax returns.

“They must have been doing some shady tax avoidance. Instead of teaching the works how to file returns, they’d just say that there was no need because you wouldn’t get caught. I felt strongly that I couldn’t work under idiots like that.”

She found an administrative scrivener, and learned that it is possible to work in the the sex industry on a self-employed basis. She just had to rent an office, obtain the necessary permit under the Adult Entertainment Business Act, and file a business commencement notification as a delivery health service.

Her only expenses were the rent for a cheap apartment used as an office, plus the cost of a rental car and a driver on the days she worked.

“The customers buy the lube and tools used during the encounters, and they cover the hotel costs, too. Anything I do pay for counts as a business expense, and I keep the entire service fee, so it’s incredibly efficient.”

She has no website and attracts clients solely through her X account. She says she has never struggled to find work.

“I brought over all the clients who used to specifically request me. Before I left my old job, I gave them my account details and told them to book me that way. This is technically against the rules, but I think most sex workers do it.”

Because of the specialist services she offers, she has a relationship of trust with her clients. But has she ever had a scary experience?

“Not with the clients themselves. However, I often run into trouble with their wives. Since I operate independently, it looks like an affair from the wife’s perspective. I’ve had wives show up at my door twice, had private investigators tail me three times, and I’ve even been sued.”

The person who sued her was the wife of her longest-standing client. In Japan, an aggrieved spouse can sue the lover of their adulterous partner for compensation, and that can include sex workers.

“The truth is, their marriage had already fallen apart, and they were living separate lives under the same roof. On top of that, the client was a business owner facing personal bankruptcy. He had transferred the titles of his home and car to his wife to prevent the bankruptcy trustee from seizing them, and I knew they were planning a divorce. Yet, she must have decided she wanted to get money out of me, too. She hired a private investigator and a lawyer.”

Anri calmly explained that she was a freelance sex worker with no money to pay. When the wife still would not back down, Anri threatened to expose the truth about the planned divorce. “She dropped the lawsuit immediately. After all, protecting the house and car was far more important than getting compensation from me.”

Just as that legal battle ended, she discovered that the wife of another client had also hired a private investigator to tail her.

“My biggest client was a doctor in private practice, but it was his wife who caused trouble; she had a private investigator tailing me for about two years. By the time I met him, he had already been separated from his wife for five years and kept saying he wanted a divorce. But his wife was a full-time homemaker who had never worked a day in her life, so I suppose she was naive about the real world. She was likely egged on by some unscrupulous lawyer claiming she could get a big settlement.”

Anri says she had anticipated these kinds of issues from the moment she started working independently.

“I keep detailed notes on my clients, and if I’m ever worried, I immediately look up the relevant laws. For instance, even if you’ve filed the proper notifications, if you engage in actual sexual intercourse and the wife finds out, you can be held liable for damages. Girls who don’t know the law often get into sugar dating too casually, only to get sued by the wife and forced to pay a settlement.”

Even so, Anri says the benefits of working independently in the sex industry are significant.

“For starters, the pay is great. My gross monthly income was actually higher when I worked at a club. I’d make ¥2 million working five days a week, but the club would take half of it. Now, I make ¥1.5 million working just two days a week. Just the other day, a client gave me a gift of ¥2 million. Quite a few clients give me tips of over ¥10,000.”

Earning ¥1.5 million a month while working just two days a week looks like a dream job. However, Anri has sole responsibility for everything from attracting customers to managing client relationships, handling taxes and legal matters, and even dealing with problems arising from clients’ personal or family lives. Anri says she wouldn’t recommend this line of work to just anyone.

With ¥150 million currently in savings, Anri’s dream of financial independence and early retirement no longer seems like a pipe dream.