Hardly is the ink dry on one article about Akihabara schoolgirl osanpo walking dates, than along comes another western report about “human trafficking” in Japan.
Vice News has made Schoolgirls for Sale in Japan, a 17-minute “exposé” about JK schoolgirl prostitution at cafes and other venues in Tokyo.
The presenter travels to Japan to interview schoolgirl prostitutes and investigate “JK culture”.
Much of this is innocent enough, from fortune-telling to music idol groups.
But as a near scuffle with a minor gangster on the streets of Akihabara shows, with some of these services there is more going on under the surface.
There’s no facts or real research in the documentary, though it does have some nice footage and at least one decent interview with a former JK prostitute.
Of course, it got a big promotional push from Mail Online, no strangers to puritanical moralizing about such matters (all why indulging in the “sidebar of shame” filled with female celebrity bodies).
Jake Adelstein, never unwilling to plug his brand as “Japanese underworld man” (he even sits in seiza at one point — he’s gone native!), pops up as the “local expert”.
Japan’s obsession with cutesy culture has taken a dark turn, with schoolgirls now offering themselves for “walking dates” with adult men. Last year the US State Department, in its annual report on human trafficking, flagged so-called joshi-kosei osanpo dates (that’s Japanese for “high school walking”) as fronts for commercial sex run by sophisticated criminal networks.
In our exclusive investigation, VICE News host Simon Ostrovsky will bring you to one of Tokyo’s busiest neighborhoods, where girls solicit clients in their school uniforms, to a concert performed by a band of schoolgirls attended by adult men, and into a café, where teenage girls are available to hire by the hour. But the true revelations come behind closed doors, when schoolgirls involved in the rent-a-date industry reveal how they’ve been coerced into prostitution.
Here’s the video:
We’re gonna lay our cards on the table. We’re not fans of Vice because we think they are hypocrites.
They take very interesting and often controversial subjects, and make short sensational articles and videos out them.
Vice wants things both ways — they want to exploit and enjoy the “darker side” of society, while also passing moralistic judgments and pretend to be on a journalistic crusade.
Maybe the makers of this specific documentary are sincere but we find it hard to stomach when we think about Vice’s previous output.
Remember, past Vice documentaries on Japan (it frequently likes to cover Japan, since it fits the mold of “sex” and “weird” very well) include ones on hostesses and hosts.
