Nonno Satake, member of Rino Sashihara idol group, caught doing compensated dating

The casting couch is one of the open secrets of the idol industry. Another one is the extra money that idols (music, gravure, AV), seiyu, models, and actors earn from compensated dating.

This gets exposed at regular intervals by tabloid scoops. One such scandal caused Shoko Takahashi to lose her agency as a gradol (when she worked as Shoko Takasaki) and launched her porn career.

The JAV star Yuria Satomi had trouble with the tax agency in 2016 over huge amounts of undeclared income from her “boyfriends,” who compensated her financially for their relationship.

The latest scandal was broken by Bunshun earlier this week. The tabloid magazine snapped pictures of the idol Nonno Satake (佐竹のん乃) involved in “papakatsu” — compensated dating with older men. The phrase has become well known due to scandals like the former Sophia University student and her paid relationship with a much-older politician. There are kosai clubs that older, affluent men can join to get introduced to women willing to date them.

The 22-year-old Satake was pictured waiting in a lobby of a luxury hotel in Tokyo one evening in late February. A middle-aged man then came from the elevators to meet her and they went up to his room. She returned about 90 minutes later. A short but apparently rewarding date for both parties.

Satake is a member of the idol group =Love, which is produced by former AKB48 star Rino Sashihara.

Satake is graduating the group at the end of the month, though this was announced already in February — before the story came out publicly — and she took part in a farewell concert on March 6. The =Love website makes no mention of the scandal, if this story justifies such a label, and Satake’s social media does not mention the allegations.

It is possible that Satake was doing this for a while, since idols infamously earn relatively little money. Or she started recently to give her options in her post-idol career. Either way, she is clearly in demand in Tokyo’s kosai clubs, so won’t go hungry.