Another day, another news story about Okubo Park prostitution as the moral panic over street walkers in the area and Kabukicho host club debt and addiction continues.
The latest tale of woe is the arrest of a 53-year-old man, Atsuhiro Kodama, on child prostitution charges on October 18, after he took a 16-year-old high schooler he picked up in Okubo Park to a nearby love hotel.
To pay for her obsession with male underground idols (chika idol), she apparently starting doing papakatsu (sugar daddy compensated dating). Someone on social media told her that you can earn a lot of money doing that in Okubo Park.
She began going to the park in September and has slept with several men since. She would go three times a week, having sex with three men a day on average. It meant she could earn ¥700,000 in a month, almost all of which she used to for oshikatsu (supporting her favorite idol).
She allegedly told the man her real age, though sharp-eyed readers will note that 16 is the national age of consent in Japan, so even we don’t fully understand why Kodama has been detained on a child prostitution charge. Is this a gap in the law? It seems that having sex with someone under 18 can still lead to prosecution under the child prostitution law.
According to police, Kodama approached the unnamed girl on the afternoon of October 15. He gave her ¥20,000 in cash and they went to a Kabukicho love hotel. (Giving her the money up front seems like a bad idea, given the recent news about scammers operating in Okubo Park.)
This was observed by two cops patrolling Okubo Park in an effort to tackle streetwalking. When Kodama came out of the hotel, they questioned him and this led to his arrest.
In what is surely not mere happenstance, the tabloid magazine Friday had a cameraman in the vicinity and captured the moment Kodama was being transported by car to a police station. He looks like he’s still in a state of shock.
Kodama has admitted part of the charges: namely, that he gave the girl the money but didn’t know she was under 18. We wonder how the police will be able to prove that he knew — or perhaps this won’t matter to prosecutors who want to pursue the case and set an example that might deter others from making the trip to Okubo Park. The media reporting of the case, in which the tabloids and police are clearly working symbiotically, is part of this strategy.
Friday finishes its report with an anonymous comment from a reporter claiming that underage prostitution is increasing in Kabukicho due to illegal male idol groups and host clubs, which ply the young girls with expensive alcohol and demands to buy oshikatsu items. They apparently manipulate the vulnerable girls by telling them that they can’t meet unless the girls order something beyond their means, with the result that they turn to papakatsu or prostitution.
Though it mentions this is the first such case of a male customer being arrested on prostitution charges in Okubo Park, Friday urges police to tackle the causes driving this surge in young streetwalkers by stamping out the male chika idols and host clubs engaged in illegal business practices.
