Two men surrender to police over DJ Soda groping incident at music festival
August 24, 2023
/ Tadashi Anahori
Last week, we reported on the sexual assault that Korean music artist DJ Soda suffered at a music festival in Osaka during a part of her performance on August 13 in which she got close to fans.
Since DJ Soda first went public (initially to her five million followers on Instagram) with her distress over the assault, the case has ignited a furore in Japan and elsewhere.
Netizens in Japan -- who tend to be male, nationalistic, anti-Korean, and not known for their sympathetic attitude toward women -- have accused her of being anti-Japanese because she claimed it was the first such ...
SOD Land porn theme park to reopen after five-month closure
August 9, 2023
/ Tadashi Anahori
Japan's porn giant Soft on Demand seems finally to have recovered from one of the most bizarre and shocking screw-ups in their history.
SOD Land in Kabukicho suddenly closed down in March this year after police discovered it was violating the law on fuzoku ("amusement businesses") establishments, which covers hostess clubs, brothels, and so on.
Billed as an "adult theme park," SOD Land allows visitors to meet and interact with actual Japanese porn performers (and others like sex workers and hostesses) in various ways across five floors, including bars and a space for viewing performers in ...
Twitter users arrested for selling uncensored selfies and videos
July 3, 2023
/ Tadashi Anahori
Japan's obscenity laws about not showing genitalia apply to you, even if you are supposedly an amateur and not a professional porn production company churning out DVDs and streaming releases.
On June 30, Japanese media showed police giving 21-year-old Yukino Kimura the perp walk.
Her crime? She had sold unedited videos on Twitter to people who sent her a message on the platform. Her account was apparently reinya3_, which is still active at the time of writing but has not been updated since early June.
The cutie worked by day as a company employee in Kyoto but had a Twitter account ...
Japan raises national age of consent to 16, criminalizes voyeurism
June 19, 2023
/ Tadashi Anahori
It has long been common to see claims that Japan's age of consent was just 13, which would lead to lazy generalizations that this was why there was so much loli porn.
Of course, in practice, this was never true: local ordinances against lewd actors with minors meant the actual age of consent was typically 18 and on par with (if not higher than) most other countries in the Global North.
It was true, though, that the national age of consent was 13, unchanged since 1907. (For context, age of consent is 14 in Germany, Italy, and China, and 15 in France.)
This has now changed after lawmakers ...
Japanese train groping videos are selling on Chinese websites
June 9, 2023
/ Tadashi Anahori
Gropers on trains in Japan are filming their activities and selling them on websites in China, according to an investigation by the BBC.
The recently published report claims that public molestation videos are a growing market, with content sourced from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.
Known as chikan in Japan and most common on public transport like crowded trains, groping is a widespread social problem in East Asia. Public awareness of it is very high, with posters at train stations warning people to be vigilant, and even women-only carriages on rush-hour ...
Kyoto man arrested for forced use of vibrator on female customer at hair salon
June 6, 2023
/ Tadashi Anahori
On May 31, Kyoto police arrested a 37-year-old man who runs a hair salon in the city on suspicion of "quasi-forced indecency."
Teppai Kozaki is accused of forced use of a massager on a woman.
The charge relates to an act allegedly done quite some time ago -- February last year -- in which Kozaki sexually assaulted a female customer in his salon for 40 minutes.
The 24-year-old woman was lying back in a chair to get her hair dyed when Kozaki allegedly started to use a massager on her genitals over her clothes. It is unclear how the victim reacted and whether she attempted to escape but was ...
Chinese massage parlors in Tokyo turn to vigilante groups to protect sex workers
June 5, 2023
/ Tadashi Anahori
When you use a sex worker of some description in Japan, they may well be operating under yakuza protection if they belong to a brothel or other such service. This is especially the case with sex workers and services based out of areas like Kabukicho in Tokyo.
Many sex workers in Japan are actually Chinese, especially the ones you see plying their trade out in the open on the streets of Dogenzaka or who work at venues advertised as "Chinese massage" or a similar euphemism. They too are probably (hopefully?) protected in some way from police, rivals, and violent customers.
If a client gets ...
Man arrested for organizing sex parties in hotels
June 1, 2023
/ Tadashi Anahori
A self-employed man from Nagoya was arrested by Aichi police on May 30 on suspicion of violating the anti-prostitution law.
According to Japanese media reports, the 50-year-old man is accused of holding sex parties at hotels.
The man organized over 50 such gatherings of men and women between September 2021 and around December 2022, usually involving half a dozen or so people each time. The male participants paid from ¥10,000 to ¥15,000 to join a session, though there was no charge for the women.
Participants were part of an online club or organization of people who wanted to take part ...
Attempted murder of client by papakatsu prostitute is cautionary tale
May 19, 2023
/ Tadashi Anahori
Be careful. That cutie you are messaging on that app or website may not be who she says she is.
Meeting in person is still the safest way to guarantee someone looks like their picture -- but even this is a risky proposition, as their personality might be homicidal.
A cautionary tale about papakatsu has generated headlines in Japan recently.
Rino Ito was arrested near Hiratsuka Station on May 4 for attempted murder after stabbing a middle-aged man in the belly with a knife.
The 28-year-old called Kanagawa police herself and confessed to the crime, before waiting for officers to arrive and ...
Japan’s teachers turn to host clubs and prostitution to make ends meet
May 11, 2023
/ Tadashi Anahori
Tokyo is currently facing a serious shortage of public school teachers, with the blame being put on the long hours and low pay.
Could another reason for the shortfall be that young teachers keep getting arrested?!
According to an article by Friday, money trouble is pushing some educators into a spiral of addiction and leading them to make risky life choices that land them in trouble with the police.
In February, a male junior high school teacher in his twenties was arrested in Nagoya after making the mistake of asking a female plainclothes police officer if she wanted to go to a host club. ...