With crackdowns on violators of child prostitution and pornography statutes having increased in recent years, Nikkan Gendai (May 17) wonders how a manager of an online operation that primarily sold lolicon (“Lolita complex”) films was able to evade detection for an extended period prior to his arrest earlier this month.
On May 13, officers took Ikuhisa Otsuka, 42, into custody for violating of child pornography and prostitution statutes regarding the sale of adult videos featuring minors by operating an Web-based shopping site from a one-room apartment in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
“The films featured middle- and high-school girls between 10 and 17 years of age having sex,” says an investigator.
Between 2009 and this year, Otsuka amassed a customer list of 7,000 people and sold 180,000 discs for 65 million yen. The suspect started the business in 2007. The discs were priced at 350 yen each.
Officers also seized seven duplication machines, six computers, three mobile phones, and 20,000 original DVDs.
Adult-entertainment writer Yukio Murakami says that since the police keep their eyes carefully peeled for such content, organized crime is reluctant to be a source. “Guys like Otsuka work as amateur traders,” says the writer. “They will hang around game centers looking for young male delinquents and propose the idea of buying covert footage of them having sex with their girlfriends.”
The going rate might be 50,000 yen for a video, with the trader telling the youth how to install the camera in his apartment. “Guys will also pick-up gals and take them to hotels,” continues Murakami. “The session will be shot under the guise that nobody else will see the film. But before she knows it, films of her having intercourse will have hit the market.”
Another source of films is single mothers in need of quick cash who have girls enrolled in kindergarten or elementary school. Murakami says footage of such a girl having her underwear removed while asleep fetches 100,000 yen.
“Besides that, a genre known as ‘the mountain series’ is popular,” the writer assures. “Films showing a fully nude girl frolicking in a mountain setting go for 200,000 yen.”
Source: “Rorikon ura DVD dare ga tsukutte iru no ka?” Nikkan Gendai (May 17, page 8)