Life story of an elderly prostitute in Kabukicho

In November, Bunshun published a two-part report about an elderly female prostitute, based on a book by Mizuho Takagi about street prostitution in the Kabukicho district of Shinjuku, Tokyo. The same book included an interview with a teen prostitute in Kabukicho, previously introduced in October.

One morning in Kabukicho, Takagi called out to an elderly woman crouching on the asphalt and got to know her. Kumi (not her real name) was standing on the street, working as an elderly streetwalker for ¥3,000 a session. She looked to be over 60 years old and he gradually came to learn her story.

Born and raised in Osaka, Kumi graduated from a local high school, married at 20, and had a daughter. After divorcing her husband at age 24 due to his gambling addiction and infidelity, she was forced to work at a small “fashion health” club (sex parlor) while raising her daughter as a single mother.

“Around age 30, I started working as a streetwalker at Izuminohiroba. Both the club and the customers preferred younger girls, so they wouldn’t hire me forever.”

Izuminohiroba is a meeting spot marked by a European-style fountain in a corner of Osaka’s Umeda underground shopping mall. It was a well-known street prostitution spot until 2021, when the Osaka Prefectural Police arrested 61 women aged between 17 and 64, who were prostituting themselves there, on suspicion of violating the Anti-Prostitution Act. It has since been closed.

Assuming Kumi is over 60, it would have been around 1993 when she became a streetwalker. This was before the revised Entertainment and Amusement Act legalized dispatch-type adult entertainment (fuzoku) establishments in Japan, known euphemistically as delivery health. Such call girl services are rampant today, making it easier for women of all ages to engage in sex work more safely and discreetly. In the early 1990s, Kumi has fewer options.

At Izuminohiroba, she would solicit men and have sex with them for around ¥10,000. “Sometimes, I could even sell myself for ¥20,000 or ¥30,000.”

She subsequently moved to Tokyo in search of better-paying work, and even did a stint as a hostess in Shin-Okubo. However, as she got older, she couldn’t keep it up for long.

She plyed her trade in the Shinjuku Health Plaza Hygeia and Okubo Park areas of Kabukicho, which she discovered while wandering the area during her time as a hostess in Shin-Okubo. When Kumi was in her 40s, her daughter came of age and moved out. This meant that she no longer had any reason to earn more than her living expenses.

By that time, the ban on opening delivery health services had already been lifted, meaning even mature women could be hired. But did she never consider working a daytime regular job? “Well, I’d been doing this kind of work for such a long time by then . . .”

Kumi’s rate per person fell to a mere ¥3,000 or ¥5,000. Offering men who approach her such a low price — far below that of a younger streetwalker or a blow job in a pink salon — can be hard to turn down. After some negotiation, she would give the customer a blow job or handjob in a public restroom, or sometimes on the landing of a nearby building.

She was living in internet cafes and at a bathhouse, eating the free breakfasts those establishments offered. She at least has unlimited access to the internet and TV, and she even has free drinks and snacks. Though living below the poverty line and no longer in contact with her daughter, Takagi finds Kumi surprisingly upbeat and connected to what was going on in the world.

He takes her own for a cheap bowl of noodles. “I like noodles,” she tells him. “Last year on New Year’s Eve, I splurged a little and had tempura soba.”

Kumi shows him around the private room at the internet cafe where she stays. “I always use the night pack, which runs from midnight to morning, which is cheaper than the 24-hour rate.”

Like some of the streetwalkers Takagi has interviewed in the past, he suspects she is suffering from some kind of mental illness.

In reality, it was difficult for her to even make ends meet at the internet cafe. At best, she only makes a few thousand yen a day, sometimes even nothing at all. It makes it hard to find somewhere even to store her belongings, and she would leave the internet cafe around 9 a.m. and stay out on the street until 10 p.m.

“I change locations every few hours, sometimes near the park, sometimes on the steps of Hygeia.”

What about her change of clothes and cold weather gear? Kumi was carrying a large, well-worn paper bag and a nylon bag. The larger paper bag contained disposable toothbrushes, cotton balls, and spare underwear, likely obtained from love hotels or internet cafes, while the other bag was haphazardly stuffed with a wallet, makeup, and other items.

She had left her other luggage in a nearby locker. Kumi took Takagi to see. The locker contained a single bag the size of an A3 notebook. The contents included stacks of disposable polyethylene bags and towels, all seemingly insignificant items but no doubt important to Kumi. This was the sum total of her personal belongings.