SAITAMA (TR) – The type of relationship known as papakatsu — whereby a man serves as a “sugar daddy” to a much younger woman — is frequently criticized for facilitating backdoor prostitution and sexual exploitation under the guise of paid companionship.
For one 21-year-old university student, she experienced a real-life nightmare after discovering the older man she was seeing for papakatsu was actually her estranged biological father, reports Gendai Business (Apr. 22).
Wakana Sonobe (a pseudonym), a university student living in Saitama, began the relationship during the summer of her freshman year. After an introduction to a wealthy 48-year-old man by a friend, the relationship quickly crossed boundaries and developed into a sexual relationship that resulted in her becoming pregnant.
However, a shocking revelation soon shattered the arrangement: the man paying for her companionship was the father she had never met.
“I never thought he could be my real father,” Wakana tells the publication. “I didn’t even know what my father looked like in the first place.”
“Attempted suicide”
Wakana’s mother, now 38, gave birth to Wakana at the age of 17, but the father, 10 years her senior, was already married. In short, it seems that her mother had no choice but to become a single mother because of an extramarital affair.
“My father was a customer at the cafe where my mother worked part-time,” Wakana tells Gendai Business. “I heard that my mother approached him and they started dating. When my mother’s pregnancy was discovered, my grandparents were naturally against the birth, but my mother insisted on having the baby and even attempted suicide, so they had no choice but to accept it. My father also didn’t have children with his wife, so it seems he wanted her to have the baby.”
Wakana’s mother dropped out of high school to give birth. While her father didn’t acknowledge Wakana as her legal daughter, he did provide financial support. However, when his wife found out about Wakana and Wakana’s mother, they divorced.
“I was about three years old at the time. My grandparents, fearing a lawsuit from my father’s wife, intervened, and my mother received a lump sum of money from my father as severance,” Wakana says.
“Decided to give up on my mother”
When Wakana was 13, her mother married a man she met at work.
“My mother had had several boyfriends before, but this was the first time we lived together, and since I was a teenager, I rebelled terribly. My stepfather was considerate of me at first, but I was so uncooperative and rebellious that he seemed to get fed up.”
Wakana’s stepfather began ignoring her, and her mother became increasingly flustered, caught between her daughter and husband as their relationship deteriorated.
“The house felt completely like two separate households: a couple and a mother and daughter. It was more than just uncomfortable,” she says.
After entering high school, Wakana started working part-time because she didn’t want to be at home, but with more disposable income and a wider circle of friends, she began running away repeatedly.
“I was once apprehended for wandering around late at night, but it was my grandmother who came to pick me up. My mother didn’t come because my stepfather objected. That’s when I decided to give up on my mother,” she says.
“Hid our names and backgrounds”
Wakana didn’t want to live a life controlled by men like her mother—so she began studying intensely and went to university to broaden her future options. At the same time, she rented an apartment and became independent.
“My grandmother paid for my entrance fees and the money I needed for living alone, but I took out a scholarship to pay for my tuition,” she says.
Wakana, who didn’t want to neglect her studies, was looking for a well-paying part-time job that she could do in a short amount of time. That’s when her friend suggested papakatsu.
“My friend was using an app to do papakatsu, and she introduced me to my father through an acquaintance of her sugar daddy,”
She never dreamed they were father and daughter. Their relationship transcended age differences and social standing, and, naturally, they became romantically involved.
“At first, we both hid our names and backgrounds. My father only said he was divorced, and I only said I didn’t get along with my parents,” Wakana remembers. “Regarding my hometown, after my mother and biological father separated, I moved with my grandparents, and I always referred to that area as my hometown, so my father didn’t seem to think there was any connection.”
“Didn’t even know what my father looked like”
Although their relationship began as a sugar daddy-type arrangement, they began to face each other with sincerity, defying the inappropriate connotations of the term.
“Because of the 27-year age difference, I was able to be more affectionate with him than with anyone I’d ever dated before, and I felt incredibly secure when I was with him. My father also told me things like, ‘She’s cuter than any woman I’ve ever been involved with. She’s someone I want to cherish.'”
As their relationship deepened, the two gradually revealed more about their backgrounds, but even then, they still didn’t realize they were father and daughter.
“I think a big reason was that my father never revealed the existence of his secret child, but to begin with, I didn’t even know what my father looked like,” she says. “I think I was too young to remember when he separated from me, and although there are photos of me with my father at home, his face isn’t clearly visible in any of them.”
In addition, Wakana doesn’t resemble either her father or mother.
“If you look closely, there are some similarities,” she tells Gendai Business, “but it’s not noticeable at a glance. My father and I have the same mole in an unusual place, but we even laughed about that, saying it was ‘proof of compatibility.'”
Pregnant
After continuing a relationship for about two years, unaware of its forbidden nature, Wakana became pregnant with her father’s child.
“It was when I was a third-year university student,” Wakana says. “I was about to start job hunting, so I was planning to have an abortion, but my father said, ‘If you have the baby, let’s get married,’ and so I went to meet my parents.”
Her mother, who had been told about the pregnancy and marriage by Wakana beforehand, said to her, “To get involved with someone so much older…maybe you was looking for her father’s image after all.”
It was more than that.
Wakana and her father deliberately chose a time when her stepfather was away to visit her mother at their house. Even before Wakana introduced them, her mother and father were speechless the moment they set eyes on one another.
“No way…You’re kidding, right?” her mother said.
Seeing the unusual atmosphere between the two, Wakana felt an unfathomable unease. When she pressed her mother, her voice strained, she said, “This is your father.”
“Wandering the streets”
The three were speechless for a moment. Finally, it was her mother who spoke. “I don’t know how this happened, but I can’t have this child,” she said.
For Wakana, the new life she had just begun to cherish suddenly seemed abhorrent. “My mind was just in complete chaos,” she tells Gendai Business.
A few days later, Wakana underwent an abortion and went to her father’s house to recuperate, where she ended up living with him.
“It was the result of a discussion involving my mother,” she says. “I felt I had completely cut ties with my mother, and my father, on the other hand, couldn’t leave me alone, thinking that I might end up wandering the streets after being abandoned by my mother.”
Afterward, an irreconcilable atmosphere began to permeate the relationship between Wakana and her father, who had been in a romantic relationship for two years.
Wakana says, “Strangely enough, once it was revealed that we were parent and child, we stopped feeling any sexual attraction towards each other. At the same time, I began to despise my father, whom I had respected and trusted as a man, and I think he felt the same way. Even so, we both tried to start over as parent and child, knowing that he was the type of person who engages in papakatsu.”
But even that didn’t go as planned.
“After all, we already knew each other’s male and female sides completely,” she says. “That’s a side of my father I didn’t want to know. I absolutely don’t want to remember it, but I can’t forget it either.”
“Distance between us grew”
Not only did they avoid physical contact as a man and a woman, but they also avoided even the most basic physical contact as blood relatives. Even though they lived under the same roof, they were like complete strangers.
“We had separate rooms, and when we didn’t have anything to do, we’d both retreat to our own rooms. Before we knew it, we were using polite language when we spoke,” she says. “Even when I received living expenses or pocket money, it felt less like receiving it as family and more like compensation for doing housework and taking care of my father. We sat far apart when eating meals and watching TV. The distance between us grew, both physically and mentally.”
Some time after they started living together, her father’s ex-wife came to visit. “My father had said the reason for the divorce was ‘incompatibility of personalities,’ but I sensed that I was also a contributing factor,” she says.
As his ex-wife was leaving, she looked at Wakana and her father side-by-side and said, “They really are father and daughter. They look alike.”
“Neither Wakana nor her father had ever thought they looked alike. “If she had looked more objectively, she might have noticed the resemblance, but perhaps our unusual meeting had distorted our perspective,” Wakana says.
With about 10 months until Wakana graduates from university, she has secured a job offer and might be moving on from her father.
“I have mixed feelings, a sense of relief and sadness,” she says. “If we hadn’t met in that way, I wouldn’t be feeling this way, and I can’t help but resent my fate.”
