Friday has published an interview with a teenager who is a tachinbo streetwalker in Okubo Park to pay for her host club addiction.
"I've become addicted to host clubs and now I'm working in Kabukicho," the teenager confesses, saying she has sex with three men a day for ¥20,000 a pop.
"My day and night cycle is reversed. I sleep until the afternoon and head to Kabukicho in the evening. I stand in front of a hotel until dawn, waiting for a man to approach me."
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department arrested 35 women in their 20s to 40s on suspicion of violating the Anti-Prostitution Act ...
The post-COVID uptick in streetwalkers in the Okubo Park area of Kabukicho, Tokyo, has been a media obsession for some time in Japan, generating a moral panic over the young age of the women and also some embarrassment because it has coincided with the huge rise in tourist numbers in Japan.
In the age of social media, going to rubberneck the lines of prostitutes at Okubo Park has become an activity for tourists to do as well as contributed to the notion that Tokyo is already a destination for sex tourism like Bangkok. Of course, approaching women on the street does not come without risk and ...
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 ...
Tokyo Metropolitan Police announced the arrest of seven men in their twenties on suspicion of violating the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Concerning the Prevention of Disturbing the Peace.
The arrests were announced on June 25. The men are alleged to have been scouts luring women to work at hostess clubs and brothels in the Kabukicho area of Shinjuku, central Tokyo.
The men are thought to be members of the largest scouting group in Japan called Natural. Two of the men have admitted the charge, while the other five claim they are not scouts and did not recruit women.
The arrests are the ...
Police have raided a brothel that offered services to foreign tourists, arresting seven for violating the prostitution law.
The establishment in Kabukicho, central Tokyo, provided Japanese sex workers for overseas visitors.
Police proudly showed the fruits of their efforts to reporters on February 4, which included English-language information ("Our shop provides Japanese-style service by Japanese girl. The service content may differ from that in your home country"), multiple phones, and cash in sixteen currencies.
The 54-year-old Japanese manager and other arrested six members of staff ...
A month ago, we wrote about the trial of former House of Representatives member Tamotsu Shiiki underway at Tokyo District Court, accused of sexually assaulting a junior high school first grader in a karaoke parlor in Kabukicho.
Shiiki's excuse was that he "didn't ejaculate." He also tried to claim that he was trying to help the 12-year-old in August last year. "I wanted to do something for her because she was a runaway. She was looking for someone to talk to." This claim rather falls down when we consider that Shiiki went to buy personal lubricant before taking the student to the karaoke ...
The trial of former House of Representatives member Tamotsu Shiiki got underway at Tokyo District Court on December 24. He is standing trial for sexual assault of a junior high school first grader in August last year, having picked the runaway up in Kabukicho -- one of many such so-called Toyoko kids in the Shinjuku district -- and taken her to a nearby karaoke place knowing that she was underage.
At the karaoke parlor, the member of staff was concerned, because Shiiki and the 12-year-old girl did not seem to be a father and daughter. They asked for a name and phone number, and Shiiki gave a ...
The photographer Beniko has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a follow-up photo book to her 2023 publication about Japan's disappearing old red-light districts (yukaku, akasen).
Beniko is herself a former sex worker at a soapland in Yoshiwara, the famous red-light district in east Tokyo that was a booming licensed pleasure quarter during the Edo period. A single mother in her early fifties, she taught herself to use a camera from the age of 48.
She has given guided tours of Yoshiwara and taken portraits of porn stars, strippers, and Yoshiwara soaplands.
Her photography project has ...
Here's a case that ticks all the boxes about the current moral panic.
A concafe ("concept cafe") staffed by men in Kabukicho, Tokyo, is accused of exploiting vulnerable female customers.
Concafes can be innocuous themed cafes but are often staffed only by men, making them essentially a kind of host club (similar to how girls' bars are like a cheap hostess club). The customers come for the fantasy created by theme (butlers, doctors, private boys' boarding school students, etc.) and the men who work there.
At this one, 32-year-old Takuma Ono is alleged to have tried to force a 20-year-old ...
Another day, another news story about Okubo Park prostitution as the moral panic over street walkers in the area and Kabukicho host club debt and addiction continues.
The latest tale of woe is the arrest of a 53-year-old man, Atsuhiro Kodama, on child prostitution charges on October 18, after he took a 16-year-old high schooler he picked up in Okubo Park to a nearby love hotel.
To pay for her obsession with male underground idols (chika idol), she apparently starting doing papakatsu (sugar daddy compensated dating). Someone on social media told her that you can earn a lot of money doing ...
