TOKYO (TR) – On a sweltering midsummer night in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho red-light district, women waiting for customers can still be seen wiping sweat from their brows. But the epicenter of this illicit trade has shifted.
The phenomenon of financially destitute women working as tachinbo (streetwalkers) exploded into a major social issue around Okubo Park about four years ago. Today, however, the park is virtually empty of prostitutes and the men who seek them.
Driven out by intensified police crackdowns and nuisance YouTubers, the women have relocated deeper into the neighborhood’s love hotel alleys, reports weekly tabloid Friday (Sep. 25).
Okubo Park
According to one streetwalker, the move was a matter of survival.
“It’s to avoid trouble, like having our faces exposed on social media by streamers. There are fewer thrill-seekers and casual onlookers in the love hotel alleys,” she explained. “A big factor was also last July, when four women waiting for customers at Okubo Park were arrested for violating the Anti-Prostitution Law, and their real names and faces were broadcast on the news.”
The fear of public exposure and arrest has successfully weeded out newcomers and casual tourists. What remains in the love hotel district is a hardened core of “regular” prostitutes and seasoned johns.
Due to the familiarity among this remaining crowd, the dark alleys have morphed into what resembles an open-air bar Men and women can be seen casually drinking alcohol and chatting on the streets. Men wander the district looking for rare new faces; if they find none, they drink and chat with the regulars. In some cases, desperate women short on cash can be seen begging familiar men to “buy” them.
The abundance of alcohol on the streets, however, serves a calculated legal purpose.
Verification loophole
Under current Japanese law, a customer faces no criminal penalty for purchasing sex from an adult. However, buying sex from a minor is a severe offense resulting in immediate arrest. To protect themselves, johns have devised a cunning age-verification loophole: forcing the women to buy booze.
“A man will hand a girl 1,000 yen and tell her to go to a convenience store to buy him a drink,” one regular male customer revealed. “When she buys it, the store clerk checks her ID to verify her age. It’s a completely safe way for the man to confirm she is of age without having to demand her ID himself.”
As a result, men are left wandering the neon-lit streets of Kabukicho, drinks in hand, after their hotel sessions conclude.
While the crowds at Okubo Park have vanished, the underlying poverty driving these women to the streets remains unaddressed. The tachinbo problem hasn’t been solved by police crackdowns — it has simply changed its location and its tactics.
