While much of the current police and media obsession with young female streetwalkers has focused on the Okubo-Kabukicho area of Tokyo, Osaka is also experiencing an apparent increase in visible prostitution.
And just as police are cracking down on both the sex workers and scouts in Kabukicho, the authorities in Osaka are targeting concafes ("concept cafes" -- a kind of "lite" version of a host club) and pimps who prey on young delinquents and runaways near the Dotombori canal, and even redesigning a street to deter streetwalkers.
This has not solved the problem, it seems, because police are ...
The moral panic about young prostitutes in Okubo Park near Kabukicho in Shinjuku, Tokyo, just took a new twist with the arrest of four women for defrauding men, especially foreign tourists.
Ongoing for some time, the Okubo Park issue has been a big news story, filled with salacious detail about young women standing around in the area, waiting for men to pick them up for money. While there's nothing new about prostitution in Kabukicho, it is rare to see so many young Japanese women openly engaged in sex work (most streetwalkers tend to be Chinese, since it is more dangerous and public). Such ...
More details are emerging about the prostitution ring that preyed on young women in Osaka.
As reported widely last month, police arrested Yusuke Kimura (34) and Koki Hideshima (24) for recruiting teenaged girls, violating the Anti-Prostitution Law and Child Welfare Law.
The girls were recruited from the Gurishita area of downtown Osaka (a district known as Minami). Gurishita is the spot near the Dotombori canal under the famous Glico Man billboard. It has become a notorious gathering place for underage delinquents and runaways, and a hotbed of prostitution and crime. Commentators have ...
Crime doesn't pay, they say, but it seems that's not true if you're in the recruitment racket for prostitutes.
According to multiple media reports, a scouting group called Access introduced 78,000 women to sex work at around 1,800 establishments nationwide over a five-year period from 2019. Let those numbers sink in: 78,000 women and 1,800 brothels.
Access earned ¥6 billion in commission, police estimate.
The scout group had contracts with adult entertainment establishments nationwide, and recruited women via social media. They expanded their influence by sending women's profiles, such ...
Host and hostess clubs were demonized during the Covid pandemic as superspreaders. Despite the greater need for intimacy among clients, the sex industry also took a big hit but was denied any government handout.
This sparked controversy over perceived discrimination and some fought back: a lawsuit was filed in 2020 over the omission of sex industry businesses like delivery health (outcall escort services) and soaplands from cash relief schemes.
The lawsuit, filed by a call girl service in Kansai and successfully crowdfunded by over 1,000 supporters, was dismissed in 2022 by Tokyo District ...
If you're dating a sex worker half your age, chances are things are going to get complicated.
And so it proved for a man in his fifties in the west of Shizuoka Prefecture, who was involved with a 22-year-old sex worker in the nearby city of Shimada.
According to a report by SBS on June 9, the unnamed woman was arrested on June 8 for sending a message in which she threatened to kill the man and his family.
"I'll kill you and your whole family," she allegedly wrote in a message to the man sent on the app LINE.
The woman works at a local brothel. It is not known how she and the man began ...
Korean brokers of Japanese prostitutions have been sentenced by a court in Seoul.
According to Korea Wave, the Supreme Court of Korea dismissed the appeal of two Korean brokers on April 25, upholding the original ruling against the men of prison sentences of two years and one year and eight months.
Between November 2023 and May 2024, the pair helped approximately 80 Japanese women enter South Korea and arranged for them to become prostitutes in Seoul and Gyeonggi. Based in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, they advertised on a website under the name "Girls of the Archipelago," recruiting ...
Regular readers may remember the story we ran in December about a backstreet in the Taiyujicho/Toganocho district of Umeda that underwent a makeover in a bid to decrease the number of young women who hang around there, waiting for men to pick them and go to a nearby love hotel.
The paving for around 100 meters of the street was changed to a bright yellow color decorated with marine images in the hope that this "brightening" effect would shame young women from coming to loiter (turning the street into a de facto red-light district). Many of these women are presumed to be engaged in sex work ...
A recent column in Weekly Playboy explored what ChatGPT tells us about sex workers in Japan.
Procurement and acquisition consultant Takanori Sakaguchi used AI to analyze the sex industry in Japan. With his ChatGPT Pro account, he collected data on 635 sex workers at soaplands and "delivery heath" call girl services: their heights, busts, waists, and hips. The data were taken from high-end services as well as cheaper ones.
The results for height are not surprising: sex workers are essentially as tall as most Japanese women.
What about those all-important breasts? Sex workers almost all have ...
Police have arrested a Vietnamese man living in Hamamatsu for the alleged rape of a sex worker.
According to a report by TV Shizuoka, the unnamed man has admitted having sex with the woman but claims there was consent.
The 28-year-old works in the food and drink industry, and lives in Chuo Ward, Hamamatsu. The allegation relates to an incident at a love hotel in the same ward in late February.
It is unclear why it has taken this long for police to arrest him.
The sex worker is a woman -- presumably Japanese, though not specified in the report -- in her twenties who works for a ...
