While the uptick in streetwalkers around Okubo Park in Shinjuku, Tokyo, has attracted immense mainstream and social media attention, mostly because it seems to be very young women doing it (according to the police and media narrative) because they are all in debt to host clubs, what about Osaka?
Japan's second city rarely likes being outdone by the eastern capital, hence it is holding a hugely over-budget world expo next year as a kind of riposte to the Tokyo Olympics. And it also has its own new "problem" with streetwalkers.
The location is a certain backstreet among the love hotels in the ...
Back in 2019, we lamented the (fortunately temporary) closure of Osaka's red-light district Tobita Shinchi in a bid to stave off a crackdown by the authorities ahead of the G-20 summit. (Because the 2020 Olympics ended up being held in 2021 and with basically no visitors, the Tokyo Games ultimately did not involve as much of a crackdown on porn and sex services as expected.
There's nothing we hate more than hypocrisy and trying to hide what society is truly like, but Osaka is at it again.
With next year's expo fast approaching, Osaka police have raided a strip club called the Toyo Show ...
Just a few days after we reported on the ongoing police crackdown in Kabukicho over drugs, prostitution, and delinquency.
These reports appear literally almost daily now. Hosts arrested for extracting debt payments in dubious ways, such as introducing women to pimps. Young women arrested for soliciting on the street. It's a never-ending conveyor belt of moral outrage, dutifully reported in the mainstream media.
The most shocking stories are those that involve underage girls: some hosts are so desperate for money and so unscrupulous that they exploit minors.
The latest story is in a similar ...
The police crackdown continues on the phenomenon known as Toyoko kids, referring to the young delinquents gathering in the main plaza in Kabukicho at night.
Delinquency in Shinjuku's Kabukicho is absolutely nothing new but the current issue was sparked, in part, by the pandemic and is spatially different now, with young people gathering in one main location and the optics at nighttime contrasting with the "clean" Kabukicho.
The crackdown is linked to the attempts to gentrify Kabukicho and turn it into a tourist-friendly destination, even at night, which is ongoing for several years, and the ...
Prostitution is big business in Japan, as any wander down the back alleys of Kabukicho or around Okubo Park should quickly attest.
The former is filled with blowjob parlors and "dispatch" shops, while the latter has become a notorious hotbed of streetwalkers (actually, street standers -- since they are all just lingering and waiting for clients to come along).
We would like to think it's the sex workers themselves who are making all the yen but there are almost always middlemen (perhaps with the exception of the women at Okubo Park, which is why they are more vulnerable).
As reported ...
The media-driven moral panic over visible prostitution in Okubo Park has sparked a crackdown on host clubs, since at least some of the young woman engaged in selling their body in the area near Kabukicho, Tokyo, are doing it to pay their debts at host clubs.
There is a similar moral panic over the youngsters who gather at Toyoko, though young people up to no good in Kabukicho is totally in keeping with the history of the area -- it just jars with the attempts by the Shinjuku government and land developers to gentrify the district. The so-called Toyoko kids at Toyoko are rumored to be ...
The moral panic over host clubs and prostitution in Japan continues unabated with a story yesterday in the Tokyo Shimbun about a 20-year-old woman whose whopping ¥10 million debt to a club prompted her to begin doing sex work.
While still a high school student in Kanagawa, she went to a host club in Yokohama in autumn 2021. The chandeliers and attention of the hosts seduced her, and she was hooked.
She ended up with a debt of ¥10 million, forcing her into prostitution at Okubo Park, Kabukicho, to pay it off. The club was demanding she pay back as much as ¥300,000 a day. Even after she ...
The surge in streetwalkers at Okubo Park near Kabukicho, Shinjuku's red-light district, has prompted a media panic over the last year or so, not least because the women seem very young.
A lot of media reports have indicated that the women are doing sex work to pay off debts or fund their trips to host clubs. The latter have been demonized by the media and politicians of late, and lawmakers are trying to target "malicious clubs" that trap vulnerable women in a spiral of debt.
The streetwalkers are also perhaps not as freelance as you might think, as one case indicates.
A 27-year-old ...
We recently wrote about the frankly shocking papakatsu compensated dating fraud perpetuated by a woman to fund her trips to host clubs.
It shows many things, not least the extraordinary lengths some women will go to to feed their addiction to host clubs.
This issue has drawn attention of late, with host clubs seen as more exploitative than hostess clubs. Host clubs have developed an image as an ecosystem that preys on vulnerable women and with a financial structure that leads to debt, whereby women are encouraged to rack up huge bills that they pay later.
Many of the women who go to host ...
The crackdown on happening bars and clubs in Tokyo sadly continues. Even, as in this case, if they have been around for years.
Such venues are places for swinging and tend to be members-only, though this is usually bypassed by making people members when they pay a fee at the entrance.
The legal issue comes with public indecency, since people are engaged in sexual activities in a place accessible to the public like a bar or club. A way to circumvent the law against indecent exposure is to have private playrooms.
The happening bar was 9259 in Shinjuku, which made a nominal claim at being a ...
