One of the biggest news stories last week, at least in our adult-flavored orbit, was the arrest of several people on allegations of organizing orgies in Tokyo.
Five men and women are accused of holding swinger parties where members of the public would pay to have sex with each other. The charges related to breaches of the prostitution law: organizers are accused of prostituting the female attendees by recruiting them for the parties.
It is reported that they made ¥650 million (the equivalent at current exchange rates of $4.6 million) in 10 years by holding over a dozen such events in a month, attended by 20-60 people.
They would advertise the service by putting calls out on Twitter for people of a certain weight and height for a “photography event with creampies” (but with the last word half-censored) or for a “jukujo party.” They even held “tours” in the past taking attendees by bus to the location. Parties were usually conducted without contraception, according to news reports.
The women at the sex parties ranged in age from a sprightly 27 to a mature 57. The organizers initially used hotels but would eventually hire out a whole accommodation facility in the Okubo area of Tokyo (on the outskirts of Shinjuku’s Kabukicho and notoriously jammed full of cheap love hotels).
Despite the sensational arrest of the five organizers on November 8, who were paraded by Tokyo police in front of media cameras for the customary perp walk, it is still possible to find online announcements for orgies. Attendees typically pay ¥20,000 or ¥30,000 (but sometimes as low as ¥5,000), though women usually don’t have to pay anything.
The exchange of money (between male attendees and organizers, and possibly from organizers to female attendees) is the clincher and what ultimately allows the cops to raid the orgies. The sex itself is, thankfully, not illegal and we have rarely heard about issues of coercion or rape at such events.
Police have been cracking down on such sex parties, known in Japanese as ranko (乱交), which are openly advertised on social media.
In May, as reported on this blog, police raided Japan’s biggest happening bars (a kind of club where people go for sex parties or swinger parties). The days when such clubs were commonly and semi-openly found in Tokyo are probably now gone.
In June, Shizuoka police rumbled an orgy in a the city of Kosai attended by 120 people! They arrested the organizers (a nurse and member of the Self-Defense Forces) on charges of public indecency.
The same month, Kanagawa cops detected a sex party group attended by female high school students. Arrestees included a junior high school teacher, accountant, doctor, and monk.
Holding a non-paying private orgy in a closed hotel room among consenting individuals is also no protection, as one man found out in Fukuoka earlier in the year: he was arrested for fraud, because it was claimed that he had deceived the hotel.
It reminds us that the world of happening bars and sex parties explicitly depicted in Love’s Whirlpool was perhaps just a glossy, tamer version of reality!
