Police in Tokyo have arrested a 40-year-old man for employing a 17-year-old high school student.
Takeshi Shikano runs a sex industry business in Ikebukuro. He has been arrested on suspicion of violating the child welfare law for employing the high schooler and either making her or allowing her to engage in sex work.
Media reports about the arrest do not specify what kind of sex work, which took place in a rented room in the neighborhood in November last year. The police, though, termed it JK rifure -- or high female high school student reflexology -- service, where cuddles and so on are ...
As reported before on this blog, the implications of the change in the age of legal adulthood in Japan from 20 to 18 for the adult industry are attracted negative attention.
There are fears that teenagers will be forced into contracts and productions they don't want to make, especially as it comes in the relatively recent wake of coercion scandals in the industry.
The change comes into effect from April 1, the start of the new fiscal year in Japan. Women (and men) aged 18 and 19 will now be able to make contracts without parental consent, which includes contracts to appear in adult content ...
April marks the start of the 2022 fiscal and academic years in Japan. It also brings with a major change for young people: the age of adulthood will come down from 20 to 18.
Eighteen- and 19-year-olds can already vote, so this change has already been in the works for a while. One of the major consequences of this is regards contracts (somewhat strangely, the age for smoking, drinking, and gambling -- all the good things about being an adult -- will remain 20). In the past, they needed parental consent to sign a commercial contract until they reached the age of majority.
Given that a lot of ...
We wonder how many articles we are going to see like this as we get closer towards the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The Washington Post is the latest media outlet to step into the controversy over osanpo (walking dates) and JK business (high school girl dating) with an article somewhat provocatively headlined "For vulnerable high school girls in Japan, a culture of 'dates' with older men".
It sets the tone early on: "Here, 'high school dating' matches girls in uniforms with men in their 40s and 50s and beyond. And it means money changing hands."
It goes on to explain that the dates may be a ...
"Teenage girls luring men into dens of sleaze warned by police."
It sounds like a headline on a parody news website. The men are lured into dens of sleaze by teenage girls. Oh, so the men are the victims?
But it's not. It's an article in the Asahi Shimbun and just the latest entry in a media frenzy about the JK business ("high-school girl business") as the police continue their crackdown on what is often a thin cover for underage prostitution.
Twenty teenage girls suspected of working in the sleazy "JK business" were given a slap on the wrist by police in a series of street ...
A journalist working on a BBC Three documentary about child sexual exploitation was held in police custody.
The 29-year-old Stacey Dooley was held by police in Tokyo for two hours during the making of her documentary, Young Sex For Sale In Japan.
"It [the doc] focuses on the fact they only made it illegal to possess child pornography in 2014," said Dooley. "We set out to try and understand why it took a privileged country, like Japan, so long to come to this conclusion. Also to see if the change in their law had made any real difference on the ground."
Dooley and her team were ...
Bad news if you are into "JK business", the new style of enjo kosai (compensated dating) where you go on "dates" with schoolgirls that end in a sexual encounter. The days of casually walking into a JK business venue and getting an appointment with a teenager are possibly numbered.
These services are often euphemistically called "osanpo" (walks), though they may also be in the form of "massages" or "soine" (snuggling up together in bed), or as conversations in a "cafe" or even sessions where the customer takes photos of the girl schoolgirl in swimwear. ("JK" stands for "joshi-kosei", or ...
A new exhibition in Tokyo focuses on the controversial issue of underage enjo kosai, or compensated dating.
The "We Were Bought" exhibition runs from August 11th to August 21st, featuring the photography, text and diaries of junior high or high school students (JK, joshi kousei) who have engaged in enjo kosai, a euphemism for prostitution
The exhibition is organized by 24 students and Colabo, a support group for female high school students. The students and other girls are aged between 14 and 26, and live all over Japan from Hokkaido to Kyushu.
There are around 100 exhibits on ...
A panel of experts advising the National Police Agency in Japan has issued a report on so-called "JK business", which is the name given to the various euphemistic services offering sex with schoolgirls.
Similar to the more general enjo kosai (compensated dated), there has been a lot of media and police attention on the growing JK business industry in recent years. Some of the services include osanpo (walking dates), where you pay to have a walk with a schoolgirl. It may end at a love hotel.
Other services include sleeping side by side in a "soine" cuddle cafes or getting a massage. ...
Vice seems to have a bee in its bonnet over Japan's so-called "JK industry" of schoolgirl prostitution.
After its provocative and criticized article and video last year, now it reports on a police crackdown on "businesses that exploit underage girls".
The article is written by Tokyo Vice (no relation) author Jake Adelstein, who has made a career out of presenting himself as the gaijin expert on all things Yakuza. Recently he has tried to talk a lot about teenager prostitution too and linking it to AKB48, getting a lot of flak for it.
When a UN investigator visiting Japan ...
