Syphilis continues alarming spread in Japan in first quarter of 2022
April 25, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
The growing problem of syphilis in Japan is not new: we've been writing about it for years now. But it simples that it won't get better any time soon. Just when you think cases can't rise anymore or that the coronavirus pandemic would at least slow its relentless spread, along comes the latest batch of statistics to prove you wrong.
We are only a quarter of the way through the year but number of cases of syphilis in Japan is already up yet again, reports the Mainichi.
Compared to the same period last year -- whose overall figure reached a record high -- the number of syphilis cases has ...
Prostitute arrested for tricking older customer out of small fortune
March 10, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
Be careful what that young lady offers you: it probably is too good to be true.
When the fiftysomething man from Ibaraki met the 28-year-old Chiharu Yamaguchi through a fuzoku (brothel) service three years ago, he thought all his Christmases had come at once. They started exchanging messages via LINE and he came to believe they were a couple.
She promised she would be with him till death. Thinking she would marry him, the man agreed to her requests for money that she said she needed to pay back her student loan or her mother's operations. She is alleged to have tricked the unnamed man out ...
Tokyo female tax bureau employee punished for soapland side job to pay for host club habit
February 4, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
It's almost time to declare taxes in Japan, so we were particularly amused by this story in the news. Tokyo Taxation Bureau has announced the punishment of a 27-year-old female employee at one of its branches for breaching its rules on civil servants having side jobs.
The nature of the side job probably didn't help.
The unnamed woman was actually working at a soapland as a sex worker. For her troubles, she has been handed down a nine-month suspension, the bureau announced at the end of January.
She was working at soaplands from October 2020 to January 2022 at weekday nights and on days ...
Reduced income from porn and prostitution forces Tokyo college student into compensated dating
November 12, 2021
/ Tadashi Anahori
The tabloid magazine Weekly Bunshun has published an interview with someone they give the alias Yuna Ishihara, who is apparently a 24-year-old student at Tokyo College of Music.
But she also appears in adult video and works at a soapland in Yoshiwara, Tokyo's long-established red-light district in the east of the city.
But due to the pandemic, her income of ¥900,000 (around $9,000) a month has massively decreased, leading her to take up papakatsu.
As reported before, this is a euphemism for compensated dating with older men (sugar daddies). The principle is hardly new but the term has ...
Tokyo’s famed Nakagin Capsule Tower was once used by sex workers
September 16, 2021
/ Tadashi Anahori
It's probably Tokyo's most famous and futuristic pieces of architecture: the Nakagin Capsule Tower.
Despite its repute, it's an endangered species: demolition of the Metabolist landmark has been scheduled for a long time.
People have continued to reside in the pod-like pied-à-terre living units or use them as office spaces. Or for other uses, it seems.
We had never heard of this before but it seems that certain capsule rooms in Nakagin were used by prostitutes to service customers.
In Tokyo, a brothel-style fuzoku service typically has its own little place with basic facilities. ...
This office lady started dating older men for money due to remote working
May 28, 2021
/ Tadashi Anahori
Is compensated dating with sugar daddies increasing among Japanese women due to remote working?
Bunshun Online had an intriguing article suggesting something to that effect. It interviews a 24-year-old female office worker who has started doing "papakatsu," a newly coined kind of compensated dating where younger women go on dates with older men.
She started her new sideline in January and over the course of the past few months, has met over 60 men this way.
The woman says that shifting to working remotely has changed her whole daily schedule, making it more flexible, whole semi-lockdowns ...
Nonno Satake, member of Rino Sashihara idol group, caught doing compensated dating
March 11, 2021
/ Tadashi Anahori
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 ...
Appearance in Akihabara of sex industry information center has people worried about future of district
January 4, 2021
/ Tadashi Anahori
Around the end of December, people started tweeted about a "worrying" new development in Akihabara, the Tokyo district known for electronics and otaku culture.
The restaurant Kitchen Jiro has been replaced by a "free guidance place" (muryo annaijo) -- essentially a sex industry information center, where you can get introductions on nearby soaplands, massage parlors, and other types of brothels. Such modestly sized places are common in areas like Kabukicho or Ikebukuro in Tokyo, Namba in Osaka, or just about any downtown area in a major Japanese city.
Does this, as people seem convinced, ...
Tokyo brothel busted by police for employing Vietnamese women forced into prostitution by coronavirus
November 11, 2020
/ Tadashi Anahori
The technical intern training program in Japan has rightfully attracted international condemnation for legalizing what often amounts to near-slavery conditions for foreign workers, especially Vietnamese. Employers -- including small manufacturers -- are allowed to pay these workers extremely low wages and it is all sanctioned by the government.
The workers are trapped, unable to change jobs and frequently in debt to middle-men for the fees to get their places on the scheme and come to Japan.
Over the years, many sad stories of abuse and even suicide have emerged from the "internships" ...
Osaka orgy parties broken up by police, participants and organizer arrested
October 6, 2020
/ Tadashi Anahori
Talk about party poopers.
The cops in Osaka have arrested a 62-year-old man for violations of prostitution laws after they found seven men and women naked in his home.
On the night of October 3, as widely reported in the Japanese media, police raided his home, where the man has been running an orgy party service for years.
The five men (aged between their thirties and fifties) and two women (in their thirties) were arrested for indecent exposure, though later released. No charges were reported against them.
The organizer, Yoshihiro Murakami, admits to the allegations against him. Men paid ...