Man arrested for fraud for hosting orgy in his hotel room

When does an orgy become a crime? If it’s group sex among consenting adults, there should be no issue, right?

That’s today’s legal conundrum.

One man in Japan found himself arrested for hosting an orgy (in Japanese, ranko party). So what was his crime? Strangely enough, it was fraud.

He had booked a hotel room in Fukuoka for two people, but then ended up with eleven guests (eight men, three women) in the room in January.

He should have paid for eleven guests to stay, but only paid for two, hence his arrest. The man recruited participants in the orgy online.

There was the possibility of another, more serious charge: public indecency (indecent exposure, obscenity; in Japanese, kozen-waisetsu).

Does a hotel room constitute “public” space? That’s borderline. But the real line in the sand, legal experts in Japan say, is apparently how well people know each other — whether the participants comprise “random” people. In this case, the participants were recruited publicly online, which means it would potentially fall within the scope of public indecency.

People have cracked down on orgy parties and happening bars/clubs in the past, where swingers would go for group sex. Pinsaro (pink salon, blowjob parlor) are also at risk. Police arrest the owner and workers at a pinsaro in Ueno, Tokyo, in 2021 because the booths where they served customers were not “private” enough: the partitions were too low, meaning the sexual act was deemed to be publicly exposed.