Osaka girls bars employing teenagers, gangster arrested
Tokyo Reporter has blogged a story from the tabloids that reveals the notoriety of Osaka is not without merit.
A gangster from the Yamaguchi-gumi, Tatsuya Kajiwara, has been arrested for employing minors at the establishments under his control in Osaka, all so-called girls’ bars.
Girls’ bars are kind of super low-price hostess clubs in which the staff will all be female and there will be a small-ish charge. The decor will be typically rather kitsch or sporty, than sexy, and have a fixed bar behind which the flirty girls — always young and not usually glamorous like hostesses — serve.
Kajiwara ten bars employed girls as young as thirteen to “entertain” customers with their pouring and conversation. In Japan it is illegal to employ someone under twenty after 10 pm. Regular bar staff must be at least eighteen. However, depending on how it is presented, a girls’ bar is officially classified in the same category as adult establishments as hostess clubs and sex clubs, and so no girl under twenty would be allowed to work there.
Osaka’s girls’ bars, a city filled with all kinds of dubious establishments, are rather infamous. An eighteen-year-old barmaid died from alcohol poisoning at one bar in the city last year.
Authorities were apparently alerted when a sixteen-year-old bar girl tried to quit and Kajiwara had the cheek to try to “fine” the lass. Understandably she escaped and when safely absconded at a friend’s home, notified police.
So next you’re at a girl’s bar, take a closer look at the staff. How old are they really? Then subtract five years!
2 Comments
Are sexual activities like touching or hugging allowed with these girls? Because carrying on a conversation with an idiot teenager doesn’t seem much fun, even though they are cute and perky. Five minutes of talking about hair and makeup and I would want to blow my brains out.
@Older Guy
Sorry, at girls’ bar you aren’t allowed to touch them. But in theory the girls are good at talking and would elicit conversation from you (rather than you having to try to make conversation with them about hair and makeup)!