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Japan’s naked ‘live chat’ Internet sites offer girls alternative to peddling flesh

Shukan Jitsuwa Nov. 15
Shukan Jitsuwa Nov. 15
> (Nov. 15).

On October 24, Tsukasa Ishii, 37, the manager of the Nagoya-based site, and three others were taken into custody by Aichi and Gifu prefectural police for projecting images on the Internet of girls under the age of 18 as they removed their clothing for male subscribers to the service to view — a violation of the Labor Standards Act regarding limitations on harmful and injurious work.

All four suspects have reportedly denied the allegations.

Between October of 2011 and January of this year, the four suspects are alleged to have on 12 occasions brought a 16-year-old high-school girl to an apartment in Naka Ward for filming using a Web camera while she was in her underwear and unclothed.

A local news reporter says that most of those sessions took place late at night in one of five or six booths set up in the apartment. “In this sort of ‘behind closed doors’ environment, the performances tend to escalate in erotic content,” says the source.

Shukan Jitsuwa says that since customers will often save the material to their computers and distribute it on the Internet, the bust in Nagoya is raising concerns.

A former employee at a chat site says that in order to collect customers operators verify through identification cards that the girls are indeed enrolled in high school. “In the Nagoya case, the manager was recruiting in entertainment areas,” says the source. “He also utilized word of mouth. After he’d find one girl, it wasn’t difficult for her to introduce him to others willing to work.”

Since beginning operations in March of 2010, the site had earned 220 million yen in income through August of this year. The site had 1,500 girls and 9,800 male customers registered on its books.

This is not the only instance of this nature to have been uncovered by authorities in recent months. According to the Sankei Shimbun (Oct. 25), the day after the bust in Nagoya, 46-year-old Hirotaka Nakajima was arrested in Kyoto after he saved content from the site JK Web that included footage of a 17-year-old girl from Sapporo and offered to sell the material through his own site, a practice that is in violation of child pornography laws. The month before, another Nagoya-based site, run by 26-year-old Yosuke Kamiyama, was also busted for unsafe employment of minors.

The former employee says that the female performers prefer this type of work since it is safer and simpler than selling their bodies through enjo kosai (compensated dating). “Appearing nude (on camera) is easy,” says the source.

Members paid approximately 13,000 yen for an hour of site usage, with 5,500 yen going to the girl.

Yet it is often not simple viewing on the part of the customer. “The men also will have a Webcam set up so that the man and girl can view each other simultaneously,” says the aforementioned employee. “In some cases, this leads to ‘masturbation shows.'” (A.T.)

Source: “Tekihatsu kaiin ichi-man nin joshi kosei raibu chatto no ‘momo iro jijo,'” Shukan Jitsuwa (Nov. 15)