Illustration by Mari Kurisato (www.marikurisato.com)

Interview by Jean Ren and Jake Adelstein

JSRC: Even someone with little knowledge of Japanese culture who has never heard of host clubs before can watch this film and pick out several universal elements from it. The girls use the hosts as sources of entertainment, comfort, pleasure, and scapegoats with no reservations. It doesn’t seem like a far stretch from situations everyone finds themselves in at one point or another in real-life relationships. Do you think that this makes the film’s subjects and their experiences more relatable to a diverse demographic?

Jake Clannel: People like to extrapolate stuff about relationships from [the film], but people already make a lot of deep films about relationships. I think there’s a lot to be said about the deeper emotional implications of what people truly think or feel about those relationships. So I don’t think the film stands out because of that. The film stands out (to me) because it’s kind of a joke on the audience in a way. Everybody in that film knows what the film is about, and everybody that’s in a host club knows what it is—so when it comes time to comment on “What is your experience in a host club like?” everybody already knows the rap. There’s a sort of set of clichés that goes along with that environment. It’s like you walk into a strip club as a man in America—you know it’s a strip club—you become temporarily absorbed in the entertainment of it, which is what you’re paying for, right? And when you watch a television show the reason you sit through commercials is because you want to watch the next episode of Cheers or whatever.

I see what you’re saying. Everybody should know what the deal is.

Exactly, everybody SHOULD know what the deal is. But what you’re paying for is to not know what the deal is. You’re paying to be temporarily relieved of that faculty. I think that we’re talking about (one of?) the most extreme case(s) here. I think that for most people—for most women its an opportunity for them to go somewhere where they can get drunk, they’re not going to get raped, and they’ll be taken care of by an institution that’s set up to take care of them. It’s focused on giving these women an entertainment experience—so be it an extremely labor intensive one.

A good host is somebody who is actually talented with people, which not everybody is. The same goes for a hostess. A bunch of guys go to a hostess club and suddenly there is a whole bunch of girls being very nice to them and everybody knows what the deal is. That’s not to say that something real can’t come out of it, but you don’t walk into a hostess bar and think that it’s not one—you walk in and it’s quite clear when you get the bill what the situation is. It’s explicit in the process. If I go to a theater and I buy a ticket and somebody does something on the stage, even though for that moment—if that actor is good enough—I’m lost in the illusion, I still know that it’s a staged and scripted show. Which is what you would hope for. That’s actually the best-case scenario.

Many host/hostess clubs are notorious for being exclusive to Japanese only. Was it hard to gain the trust of the Rakkyo employees, and to get permission to do a feature length documentary? What made Issei and the guys at Rakkyo in particular trust you?

I think for Issei it was really more about us being from the outside. So his perspective on it was probably, “Why are these people interested in this? Why would you be interested? What’s your take?” I think those guys are quite famous. They get a lot of press and television exposure. Issei is very famous in his own universe.

Issei admits to sometimes getting so caught up in his host persona that he can’t even tell what his true personality is. Would you say that he, along with the other subjects, were slipping into a role and performing for the camera—acting as they felt hey were expected to—instead of being “real”?

Isn’t that what is implied by the setup? In the sense that if you shoot a great kabuki actor who has spent his life embracing and inhabiting a role, that along with that role comes the actor’s existential dilemma. And that existential dilemma is inherent in the seductive nature of theater.

But did you want them to perform for the camera, or did you want to catch them off guard. Were you aiming to capture the moments where they forgot that the camera was there?

No! no. the camera was right in everybody’s face the whole time. I’m not hiding anything. I was very surprised by the frankness. [For instance] I had no idea what those girls do for a living. I just didn’t know. For me, it came as a surprise.

So you don’t think the fact that some of the participants were blatantly lying to the camera and using their interview as a means to personal gain detracts from the objective merit of the film?

[Those guys] weren’t strangers to publicity and I think from all the host media that’s out there everyone is quite familiar with the role that is inherent in the film— that it is in some way roguish. That’s what it is to be a host, right? You are famous for being extremely charming and attractive to women and not for being anything else—there is no other component. In the first half of the film they are giving the party line: we are providing entertainment for these women, we’re making them happy. At some point every host documentary draws the same conclusions. That to me is what is interesting. If a viewer gets caught up in the plot or the idea that the contradictions presented in the film are real, then that person has missed the point. The film is designed in a way to make people get caught up the contradictions, and then reexamine their biases. Ultimately, if they digest the film for long enough, they’ arrive at a different conclusion.

So you’re saying that everyone involved—even the girl, Saori, who most dramatically proclaimed her love and devotion to Issei– was playing along with the illusion?

Yeah she’s just playing. Totally playing! Host clubs have their own media, websites, videos, ads. Everybody knows the game. When you go to a host club you are engaged in an Andy Warhol-esque 15 minutes of fame, which you are taking part in, in a very very modern world. I go to Disneyland to get my photo taken with Mickey—I am in the Disney fantasy/reality. If I’m a middle management guy in a golf magazine, I’m engaged in that set of imitations within the time and media landscape. So when you go into a host club, there are performances/photographs/menus—it’s simply inherent in the illusion is the media. In order to be a host you have to be backed up by a certain amount of media. You have to be number 1 or your photo has to be there—your reputation is validated only if you appear in some form of media somewhere—this is particularly true in Japanese culture. Why is one host more famous than another? Only because of the media that surrounds them whether its self created, microcosmic or not.

How do the guys get started it the host club business anyway? Do they rack up debts at hostess clubs and soaplands? Do they lack an education for more stable employment opportunities? Or are they drawn to hosting because it sounded cool? What’s the motivation here?

One thing that I found out, through another film that was made on the same group of guys, was that actually a lot of these guys don’t necessarily come from money. The reason they need to make a lot of it is often to support somebody in their family that needs it. And that’s not what my film’s about though. My film is not about the reality of these people’s lives, it’s about the role-playing they are involved in within this tiny realm.

And this space is the so-called Great Happiness Space?

Yes, it’s an artificial universe. Like I said the reality of people’s lives is that you don’t get the backstories.

One guy in particular was really helping out his disabled mother, and another was sending the money home. That’s actually what they were doing. That’s the tragic truth. And as I’ve said in the past there is a sort of sense in it that… (pause) that it forces you to examine capitalist priorities in a way that you might not be able to look at your own life. It’s quite easy for you to look at someone else’s life, someone who is involved in something that pushes your buttons morally, so you immediately you create a sense of otherness because your moral line has been crossed. But really, aren’t we all involved in that? How many of us could not say we don’t do things that we’d rather not do for money?

It’s a system that we all know and love. You work, the things you buy in shops my not necessarily be benefitting some child that sewed it together in China or something. But it’s difficult to observe the own contradictions in your own capitalistic systems and work out a way to take action from it whereas in the film— in the film it is very easy from the POV of somebody who is outraged or confused to draw moral conclusions about these people. Which I think is naïve. And I say that because of an absolute unequivocal level of respect, truly, for the fact that these people are involved in such an intricate celebration of something.

So the guys have financial and familial obligations that they need to tend to that require crossing a few moral lines—fine. On the job though, you get a feeling that most guys are certainly taking advantage of some of the girls. How is the viewer to reconcile what seems like a display of moral depravity?

I think anyone would tell you that there’s a real difference between fucking for money and kyabakura. That’s not to say that people aren’t human and people haven’t married their hostess or something. But I think that’s separate, that’s something else, that’s something that goes on, that’s the real world. But a host club is not the real world—it’s a theater, and I don’t think that young drunk men and women don’t occasionally do what young drunk men and women do—(laughs)

They do! Right? So I think that that’s okay, but I don’t think that that’s really interesting. It’s just an inevitable part of what it is to be human.

But this kind of system operates on the open acceptance of the notion that in addition to sexual and physical services, abstract feelings like love, happiness, the intricacies of a relationship (even if they are just illusions) are products that one can buy as well. For people, particularly Westerners, who are accustomed to putting love and affection on a pedestal, this idea might be unsettling.

Because I’m a Westerner and I really don’t know much about Japanese society—I can’t tell one person apart from another on the street in terms of social class or lifestyle—I can’t claim to have had enough foresight in the field to understand how delicate and interesting it was as a piece of psychological projection. I didn’t quite get that at the time, but intuitively I felt that this was not about morality or relationships, this is about a story that people are telling again and again. It’s set up and you go through a set of stages again and again, and that’s what it is.

Were any of your personal morals challenged in this situation?

Oh, fuck me. What kind of line is that?! That’s bullshit—does anyone over the age of 16 actually take that seriously? That’s the drama that everybody knows! It’s a prerequisite for this dilemma to be possible. But if I suspend my belief for just a moment and think a pretty young girl is actually interested, then I’m getting my money’s worth. If I don’t suspend my disbelief, I’ll go back to my ex-wife. (laughs)

Do you keep in touch with Issei and the others?

No I’ve been working in the theater for a long time, and I’m currently making a film about breastfeeding. I just finished a film abut Alaska. I spent the last 6 months of my life in the slums of Bombay. One of the beautiful things about my job, which is primarily documentation, is just moving from one amazing situation to another. I don’t think it’s [my relationship with these people after the filming]…I mean it’s irrelevant. I don’t know about their lives, I don’t know those people you know? I mean, I respect them immensely and I’m extremely grateful that I was allowed to take part in [the experience]—it gave me a lot of food for thought about what it is to address a situation that might be a bit bleak. And have created out of it something that is so mysteriously entertaining.

There’s a scene in the movie that shows a “champagne call” which is basically an activity in which the hosts are made to drink up to 10 bottles of champagne in a night in order to cater to the competitive nature of their jealous female customers. I think for many viewers, this is the point where one realizes that these guys really are hard workers.

Yeah! Nobody works harder than those guys!! No one does. They just don’t know how hard they work because they’re young. They might know, but you’re indestructible until you’re like what, 27?

So in some senses this film is really about a form of dinner theatre where everyone, the actors and the audience are playing their assigned role?

You got it! You scored—you understood it. But yes, to me that’s interesting. Some people might not think that. It’s kind of a one trick pony. It’s not exactly Shakespeare.

From my standpoint as a director, I hope there’s a point at which you stop being caught up in the battle of the sexes, and you start moving into an area where you begin to look at it as something that might actually be a little bit more charming.

The ones that were working in the sex industry were very upfront about it. But you see, the point is that the film is structured to manipulate the audience’s biases. It’s girls versus boys. If you watch it with your significant other, between the two of you there’s a point where your respective sympathies swing. So I can claim that as authorship. Of course it can only be objective to a certain degree, but my form of objectivity as a filmmaker was to embrace the theater in the business.

My husband run a hostess club illegally? Never!

Actress and talento Moe Yamaguchi was “really stunned” when she learned her husband, web entrepreneur Shigeo Ozeki, has been illegally running a posh hostess club without a license.

Ozeki and two other men were arrested May 26 for their suspected connection with “Birth Nishi-Azabu“, an exclusive but unlicensed hostess club hidden in a residential neighbourhood in Tokyo’s Minato ward. Opened in 2004, the cabaret club entertained an exclusive list of clientele with attractive young women such as models and students from famous universities. The club is said to have welcomed Tokyo politicians and celebrities, and pulled anywhere between 7 million and 8 million yen in profits per month.

Ozeki denies having anything to do with the club, saying he sold the goodwill to an acquaintance (who was also arrested) after opening it in 2004. Authorities are suspicious of monthly deposits from Birth into Ozeki’s bank account between 3 and 4 million yen, and believe he may have continued to directly manage the operation.

Police say Yamaguchi was present when they searched the couple’s Hiroo home. She released a statement Tuesday evening through her agency apologising for her husband’s behavior. “I was just really stunned when I heard the news,” she said.

Along with being married to his celebrity wife, Ozeki is known as the founder of the online shopping website EC Navi. The couple were married in 2002. According to Cyzo, Ozeki has often fancied himself a high-rolling businessman and bragged about his lavish lifestyle. In recent times, however, weekly magazines have carried rumors of embezzlements and dismissals from one of his own companies, along with stories of some rather conspicuous womanizing. Cyzo says that although Yamaguchi has been disturbed by the news, she still believes her husband.

Read the Japanese articles here, here and here.

While it looks like the entire country has decided to tackle head-on Japan’s infamous declining birth rate problem, the apparent boom in love hotels is less due to demand than it is to changes in the adult entertainment law that we reported on last December.

The 2011 revised adult entertainment law is aimed at regulating the operation of deai-kissa and gisou love hotels, or establishments registered as hotel or ryokan that are effectively operating as love hotels to get around legal restrictions on things like location. Gisou love hotels have managed to park themselves far beyond the borders limiting normal adult entertainment venues to certain areas. Some are even located within spitting distance of elementary schools and municipal buildings such as libraries, and many believe this may contribute to child prostitution, such as enjo kosai, despite the fact that people under 18 are not supposed to be allowed in.

The revisions have broadened the definition of love hotel, and closed many of the loopholes previously used by gisou love hotels. New hotels must, of course, be planned, constructed and registered according to regulations. The 2011 revisions contain a vested rights clause, however, allowing all existing gisou love hotels to be exempt from legal action if they formally registered as love hotels before January 31. Needless to say, many took advantage of the opportunity.

And residents are saying, what’s the point? The law, meant to keep love hotels away from things like schools and hospitals has instead given the go for thousands of the businesses to operate openly.

A representative from the “Rid Japan Of Gisou Love Hotels” party told Sankei News, “By allowing for vested rights, nothing changes, and now hotels that hide near schools before can operate out in the open.” Uh huh.

The owner of a love hotel argued against the accusation that gisou hotels can contribute to the rise in child prostitution, saying, “There’s been a big increase in ‘city hotels’ that are aimed towards couples, not just traditional love hotels.” With regards to minors using the facilities, he added, “We can’t ask everyone’s age. All we can do is post a sign saying under-18s aren’t allowed.”

Jake’s note: It turns out that the new love hotels are great earthquake shelters as well. Solidly built and once you’re in bed with your partner and you turn on the “body sonic” *–the earthquake tremors won’t bother you at all or become indistinguishable from other more intimate tremors. The earthquake has also resulted in a rise in marriages and hook-ups as the confrontation with mortality has made people realize the importance of carnality, and intimate relationships.)

Read the original article here.

Welcome to a joshi-kousei kengaku club.

As an evolution of the deai cafe and other fuzoku phenomenon, “high school girl viewing clubs” began appearing at the end of last year. The number of establishments has rapidly increased in Kanagawa and Tokyo prefectures, with many opening in locations such as Akihabara and Suidobashi.

Authorities investigated a club in Yokohama late last month under suspected violation of the Labor Standards Act. The venue, located amongst the restaurants and bars of the city’s Naka ward, has no sign, and those looking to visit must call ahead and get the location of the building.

Inside a club, bubbly Jpop music is piped into dark rooms and corridors. “You can relax and enjoy your time here because it’s not a brothel and it’s not illegal,” says a woman at the reception. Five small booths await paying customers with waiting times reaching far beyond an hour during busy periods.

Visitors choose between 3,000 yen for 30 minutes or 5,000 yen for 50. Upon paying, customers enter their booth, which is divided by a curtain, and look through a one-way mirror into the room full of young girls. For an extra 2,000 yen, a customer can select a girl to have sit directly in front of his booth for 10 minutes.

Because the booths are separated by curtains, customers are conscious of the men next to them. Inside the rooms there is nothing; no box of tissues, no garbage bin. A sign on the wall prohibits photos and videos.

Girls’ voices can be heard from outside. “After this let’s go get something to eat.” “I’m knackered today..” Dribs and drabs of daily life. Some chat, others read manga, but none show any sign of embarrassment at revealing their goods to the men on the other side. Some girls come in wearing normal clothing, and grab uniforms that the venue provides for them. They change, showing little sign they even know men are watching.

As the Sankei put it, “It’s like an aquarium with high school girls on display.”

The girls who populate the clubs see it less as a sexual service than just an easy way to make money. According to police, the girls get paid between 800 and 1,000 yen per hour at the club, and no sexual services are involved. About 40 girls in Kanagawa alone have registered for the job, and some girls reap up to 10,000 yen per day.

The shop advertises itself as offering enticing glimpses of real schoolgirls, and requires all potential “employees” to show their school ID to prove they’re in high school. Middle school students and girls over 18 aren’t allowed.

Police point out that, while the room is walled in one-way mirrors, the girls can still partially see the men, and have some idea of what they’re doing.

According to fuzoku journalist Yukio Murakami, the popularity of “high school girl viewing clubs” comes from how well they target a specific clientele. “Men are becoming more herbivorous,” he says. “I think ‘lite fuzoku’ that provides no actual sexual service kind of matches the generation.” Although herbivores are interested in girls, Murakami says, they’re also afraid of what might happen if they get caught looking on the street or in a train. Clubs give them a space to peep without fear.

Fuzoku writer Chuya Nakao says, “While there’s a lot of regular sex shops that have closed down because of the economy, ‘lite fuzoku’ has definitely taken off.” He predicts that fuzoku itself is certainly not going anywhere, as women learn they can have fun and make easy money through this kind of shop.

Police are attempting to target the clubs to curtail this new expansion into the fuzoku industry. Club “Yokohama Mambo” was investigated by police last month in an attempt to press child welfare laws against the venue, but because the girls are free to come and go as they please, the law wasn’t applicable. Authorities finally landed upon the Labor Standards Act, as it stipulates youth may not work in places that are hazardous from a hygienic or social welfare standpoint. They hope to investigate similar premises under the same law.

Read the original article here.

See the layout of Yokohama Mambo here.

According to those close to the investigation, the man was a frequent traveller abroad, having spent a total of at least 1,000 days in countries such as the Philippines since 2005. While the statute of limitations on child pornography cases is just three years, police made the decision to pursue the case after determining that the passage of that time limit ceases while the suspect is out of the country.

The suspect was discovered thanks to his blog, on which he frequently posted details of his trips abroad, on multiple occasions uploading nude photos of girls who appeared to be under 18.

Police investigations revealed that sometime around November 7, 2005, the suspect paid money to a Philippine girl he knew was under 18, photographing her in the nude at a hotel on Mindanao Island and saving the photos to an SD card with the intent of sharing the pictures with an unspecified number of people.

In March of last year, police raided the man’s home in the Tokyo bed town of Chofu, discovering photos of what appeared to be a different underage girl on a computer in the house. Investigators are currently working to uncover whether or not the suspect may have committed similar offences on separate occasions.

Read the original article here.

You read that right! Kyoto Prefecture announced plans to roll out a policy that will officially outlaw the possession and acquisition of child pornography, with plans to enact the regulations some time this year. Kyoto will be the first prefecture in the country to create and enforce such a regulation.

Possession of child pornography is currently legal under Japanese law, as long as there is no intent of sale or distribution. Child prostitution and pornography laws currently only outlaw the creation and distribution of pornography featuring those under 18 years of age.

Kyoto Prefecture’s new regulation will require owners to dispose of all media containing sexual depiction of youth under the age of 18, and the government is currently considering penal regulations if such requirements aren’t followed. Possession of pornography featuring children under the age of 13 constitutes child sexual abuse, and will become an automatically jailable offense. Anime, however, is not covered by the new law.

The proposed legislation was part of Kyoto governor Keiji Yamada’s manifesto during the April 2010 race for governor. The regulations were proposed in a report authored by an investigative commission of nine experts, including academics, experts in law and experts in child welfare.

The new law seems a bit fuzzy. One major problem with current legislation is the lack of specifics in what constitutes child pornography. While some content is very explicitly pornographic, Japan’s large junior idol industry exploits a grey area in the law by purporting to be art while washing their hands of any additional connotations images of scantily-clad children may have–and how those images may be used by other individuals. According to the Kyoto Shinbun, the report points out that the law would need to distinctly define what is covered under the law, for example just explicitly sexual acts, or things alluding to or involving genitalia.

The fact that anime is exempt from the law should be a point of debate as well, and is quite a large statement in the wake of Tokyo’s move to restrict the sale of anime, manga and games containing sexual images of those under 18. The simple “slap on the hand” given to first-time offenders is also questionable, and at this stage the proposed law is dubiously flimsy. It is however a step forward and much more than the Japanese national government is doing. Currently, there is not even a bill in committee to ban child pornography possession.

Additional observations from Jake:

In addition to being an editor for this website and a writer, I’m also a board director of the Polaris Project Japan, an organization which helps human trafficking victims, works to stop the sexual and labor exploitation of women, children, and foreigners, and has been lobbying the Japanese government to make possession of child pornography a crime for several years. I am also the police liaison for the organization, which means that when we have a good tip on a human trafficking organization or child pornographers, Shihoko Fujiwara, the director of Polaris Project Japan and I collect the data and information and bring it to the police. I spent over a decade covering the Japanese police force as a reporter and understand what they need to make a case. There are many detectives who are enthusiastic about cracking down on human trafficking and child pornography. One tip which we took to the police last year resulted in the arrest and indictment of a child pornographer and the dismantling of a pedophile network.

However, what was a major obstacle in the initial investigation is that the police felt that they could not get a warrant to search the home of the child pornographer if he only possessed it. They needed proof that he had been selling the materials to get a search warrant. One detective explained it very simply, “Possession is not a crime. Therefore, even if we suspect someone is involved in producing and distributing it but only know that they possess it, we can’t make a raid. We can’t seize the computer or materials that would help us track down the source of the child pornography or help us rescue the victims.  Even if possession was made a crime with no punishment other than a fine, it would immensely aid our investigations. We detest the stuff and the victimization of children as much as anyone does. Even more. However, our hands are tied behind our back. The FBI and other federal agencies pass on over a hundred tips to the National Police Agency each year about child pornography issues. Maybe one or two actually turn into prosecutable cases. Since Ando Takaharu became head of the National Police Agency, we’ve been getting more support on those investigations but they’re still very difficult.”

On February 15th, I went to  a hearing on child pornography in Japan, at the National Diet Lower House Member’s Building, as a board member of Polaris Project Japan.  Bradley Myles, the CEO of Polaris Project (Washington DC)  attended as did members of UNICEF and two senators from the Diet. We made a strong case for the criminalization of simple possession.Myles was very succinct, stating: “The actions of any country, including Japan, play an important role in the global effort (to eliminate child pornography) and when possession of these images is legal in Japan, it creates a gap and an impediment to the entire international effort to police the problem.” He advocated that Japan make possession a crime punishable by a fine and jail time.

Japan and Russia are the only remaining G-8 countries that defends the ownership of films of real children (not manga) being molested for personal enjoyment. I was hoping to ask some pointed questions after his speech, but  the Diet members skipped out halfway through the meeting and were not available for the Q & A that followed. Personally, it says a lot to me about how seriously the Japanese government takes this problem.

Perhaps, making an appearance at the beginning was the best that the senators could do.  However, when one of the Diet members made the remark, “It’s hard to find a balance between freedom of expression and criminalizing the possession of child pornography”, I felt like puking. Pardon me. Films of children being sodomized, gagged, tortured, raped and abused on film for the sadistic entertainment of others are not “freedoms of expressions” or “works of art”–they are evidence of a crime and a clear violation of decency. If you can stomach it, read the testimony of children who were used in child pornography to understand how deeply it hurts them, even years later while the films still circulate.  These films are also certainly a violations of Japan’s laws on personal privacy, if you want to get into the finer legal problems. As such, the only people who should have child pornography in their possession are the police. As long as the purchase and possession of child porn are not crimes, there will be a demand for them and there will be anti-social elements who make money off feeding that demand, some of them yakuza, some of them simply sociopathic entrepreneurs. Japan continues to be one of the largest producers and suppliers of child pornography in the world.

Hiroko Tabuchi, ace reporter of the New York Times, offered very insightful commentary as I was live tweeting the conference. By no means was she defending child pornography, she has written very balanced articles on the problem but she did point out, “The Government cites concerns people could be prosecuted for mistaken downloads, being sent files unknowingly etc.”  I would have to agree with that point. I can easily see how the law could be abused to frame people for a crime and its the kind of thing a smart yakuza would do to take down a nuisance–unilaterally send them  numerous pictures of child pornography and then immediately call the police and “inform” on the victim. Teenagers being arrested on child pornography charges for sending nude pictures of themselves to friends or their consensual partners is a clear example of law enforcement being poorly applied, and deeply flawed laws.

The law can be written requiring a burden of proof that the individual actively downloaded or bought the child pornography, repeatedly, with full knowledge of what they were buying. An exemption can be made for underage children who send naked pictures of themselves willingly to their friends or lovers.  I would also suggest possession be made a crime punishable by  a substantial fine or jail time rather than mandatory jail time. By giving the police and prosecution some leeway, it would encourage the possessor of the materials to cooperate with the investigation.  Even just making possession a simple crime punishable by a fine would be enough to let the police seize evidence in cases and capture the makers and distributors of the child pornography rather than just the end users.

If the Democratic Party of Japan has any decency they will at least put forth a bill to committee to ban possession of child pornography. There is not even a bill under debate at present–in effect, they are doing absolutely nothing. Judging by their failure to rid themselves of Ozawa Ichiro, their loyalties seem to be more about their own interests rather than the public good. Many of their financial supporters are people in the adult film and anime business producing neo-child pornography. The DPJ should be aware that Japan’s failure to act on the problem is an international embarassment. I guess that’s the best way to end these comments, with a little Japanese vocabulary lesson that I hope the Democratic Party of Japan would take to heart. “恥を知りなさい”（haji wo shirinasai). Be ashamed of yourselves.

Jake Adelstein, board director, Polaris Project Japan

“One of the reasons for the increase is due to the crackdown [by authorities], but another is that a growing number of children have become involved in the business through the widespread use of the Internet,” she said.

According to Fujiwara, a 14-year-old second-year female middle school student was forced to sell sexual services by her classmates and the scene was filmed by male customers.

A female student, 15, who attends a public high school, sold a nude image of herself through an Internet message board to raise money to go to university, as she is unable to depend on her parents financially. She contacted Polaris after a man who purchased the image threatened to meet her in person and another demanded she send more images.

(Full article here)

The piece goes on to explain how Web sites are providing the base for a new kind of enjo kosai-esque self-exploitation, allowing teenagers to receive money for posting nude photos of themselves according to customer demands. As with many online trends in Japan, the child pornography is often shot and distributed via mobile phone, making it difficult for parents to discover what’s happening.

The typical image of child pornography is that of the vile act of photographing juveniles in sexual situations either against their will or unbeknown to them, but in this case kids are often voluntarily participating in the system. While there’s much spoken about laws in the article, when children are willing to victimize themselves for money, there needs to be effort put into prevention on both sides.

The upcoming revisions will hit two types of businesses that have been identified as problems in recent years: gisou love hotels and deai-kissa. Gisou love hotels are establishments registered as hotel or ryokan that are effectively operating as love hotels. They include small spaces that don’t resemble love hotels but can be rented for short-term trysts much like this unfortunate punter did. This allows the gisou love hotel to dodge regulations that bind normal love hotels to certain districts, allowing them to set up shop near schools, residential neighborhoods and other areas. Easiest way to beat the competition is monopolise an area they can’t touch, right?

Deai kissa have been covered in past articles here, and are essentially “cafes” where people can go to select a stranger (if you’re a man) or wait to be selected by a stranger (if you’re a woman) for an activity the couple agrees upon in small meeting rooms inside the cafe. While the pretense is to meet someone for karaoke or a date, the business claims no responsibility about what happens outside of their premises, and they’re often used as vehicles for prostitution. They’ve most recently become an issue after a university student was murdered by a man she met at a cafe earlier this year.

While both gisou love hotels and deai kissa have trampled the grey line of adult entertainment laws, as of January 1, 2011, this will no longer be the case.

The revisions have redefined what a love hotel is in order to re-evaluate businesses and close many of the loop holes gisou love hotels have been taking advantage of. As of January 1, businesses that do one or more of the following may be classified as love hotels:

• Are available for “rest” use
• Have dining and lobby floor area that are less than legal standards set by capacity
• Have an entryway or reception area that is hidden from the outside
• Take payment through a machine or tube
• Use signage to direct customers to rooms instead of staff guidance
• Have installed a form of obstruction to prevent face-to-face interaction between customers and staff

The rules get complicated from there. For example, hotels that have signage to guide customers and obstructions so they may not come face-to-face with staff qualify as love hotels if payment for the room is made through a machine. If a hotel has very little restaurant or lobby space, displays “rest” prices, and has a reception that’s difficult to see, they must have a rotating or vibrating bed, a mirror in the room where people can observe themselves while lying down, “facilities that incite sexual curiosity” such as S&M goods or glass walls in the bathroom, and/or adult toys for sale in vending machines. Whew. Also, spaces which exist particularly to be rented at “rest” rates by members of the opposite sex fall under the love hotel article.

All new deai kissa will fall under the fuzoku laws. For existing cafes, any venue that facilitates a meeting by two members of the opposite sex who have never met for the purpose of having a sexual relationship will qualify, though it’s a mystery how a business would prove it one way or the other. This will effectively put all new and many existing deai kissa under the same jurisdiction as “brick and mortar” adult entertainment businesses (店舗型性風俗特殊営業), which prevents them from being run within 200 meters of particular government facilities, including schools and child welfare centers.

Some say that, under these restrictions, there are almost no entertainment district in which new businesses will be able to set up.

As a requirement, businesses must submit up-to-date blueprints or measurements of the entire premises together with their application. Other information that must be submitted includes:

• Method of doing business
• Map of the surrounding area (at least 200m)
• A diagram of the entryway and lobby
• Certificate of residence if the owner is a private individual
• In the case of a company, the above for all executives as well as company registration

Police say they will only accept applications until January 31, with all businesses neglecting to register before that presumably being slowly shut down. Ultimately, the authorities get to determine what qualifies and what does not under such complex stipulations. Whether this results in loads of shutdown or loads of bribery (or both) remains to be seen, but expect a large shift in the love hotel landscape over the upcoming year.

Memo From Jake:  Every change in the law has interesting ripple effects. I can’t help but speculate on the effects this time around. There are now several “love hotel” funds–investment trusts that are involved in the love hotel industry. It’ll be interesting to see how the new laws will effect the value of those funds or whether it will have any effect at all. What puzzles me about the changes in the laws is why do the authorities even feel they are needed?  I can see that there are some problems with the Deaikai cafes, but other than that, is an abundance of love hotels bad for Japanese society? Many people using love hotels are couples who live with their parents, or have room-mates and want some privacy to fool around. They are also used by married couples with children that don’t have space in the house to really enjoy their marital bliss. For a nation concerned about a declining birth-rate, you’d think Japan would actually be encouraging love hotel construction. I know of at least one child that was probably conceived in a love hotel because her over-worked father had to sneak out of the office to rendezvous with his wife on her ovulation day, knowing that he’d be trapped at the office all night. Ahem.

In the wake of the September murder of a 22-year-old university student by a man she met at a deai kissa, or matchmaking cafe, the Mainichi ran an article (Japanese here) that takes a look inside the very same venue where the pair met. The cafe is still running business as usual, still turning a blind eye to the interactions between customers in their “meeting rooms”. The Mainichi article gives attention to two potential sides of the deai kissa coin, interviewing both a woman who waits for a customer looking to negotiate, and another who visits to escape the doldrums of life as a telephone receptionist.

But what really goes on in a deai kissa? Are the clubs as management makes them out to be–innocuous meeting places for would-be couples–with a stray shady deal happening now and then, or are they knowingly operated as hotbeds for prostitution?

On the surface, they seem like a great way to take the pains and awkwardness out of dating for a society that has become infamous for its timid youth who are reluctant to kill “the wa”. Everything takes place with the cafe staff as mediators. Men can observe unseen from behind glass. Women wait to be chosen, then reject at will without having to say anything directly.

A look online into discussions of the cafes and deai kissa portal sites paints a mixed picture. There is overwhelming yet, for the most part unspoken, implication that these matchmaking cafes are not for those looking to meet members of the opposite sex for simply lunch and karaoke.

Photos of women feature prominently on sites, with many displaying page after page of headless ladies, often claiming that this visit to the kissa is their first experience. Similar lineups of men are nowhere to be found, leading one to believe that free entry and the chance to be ogled by strangers through one-sided windows is enough for women to flock in droves.

One portal site, deai-cafe.net, gives gratuitous PR to certain cafes through contrived conversations with, and lecherous photos of, women who are supposedly just there to blow a few hours talking to strangers.

Although a bit dated, this YouTube video does little to conceal the assumed intention of a visit to a deai kissa: booty.

On his visit to “Cafe de Ai Ai” in Ueno, Abe-san learns how the system works. When he becomes a member of the cafe–a requirement for men using most deai kissa–he holds up the membership card with a grin, the words “passport to sex” flashed below. If you can make it through all the terrible muzak, you see the owner and Abe-san chuckling about a “short engagement” some couples have, and how the possibility of meeting someone (for sex) for much higher than just going up to someone on the street.

Other videos, especially those taken “undercover” and by the cafes themselves are slightly more explicit. In some cases the view pans across a room of waiting women, lingering on the sexy bits. In others, daringly short skirts and low necklines are prostrated in front of the camera. Some have two-way mirrors both above and below the belt, giving men a worms-eye view of stocking-clad ladies seated on high stools.

Explaining the system on a door in Shibuya

Despite all this, there is nothing explicitly illegal or wrong about what the cafes are doing. Most allow only those over 18 to enter–in line with the NPA regulations set to take effect in January–and there is no money changing hands in-store. While they may serve as venues to find a quick fling, on the surface its nothing more than a bunch of randy-but-shy adults going about their business.

Below those waters is a different story, however. For one, men don’t have it that easy. The Abe-san video above mentions sakura, or women who work for an establishment secretly, agreeing to go on a date in order to get men to pay the 3,000 to 5,000 yen necessary to take her out then buggering off soon after, or getting a free meal and giving bogus contact information. Likewise, there are women who are habitual deai kissa users known as kaiten-jo, getting free meals or entertainment then extorting money for transportation from their dates before heading back and repeating the process.

This video touches on such kaiten-jo, and explains how high school girls are freely allowed in and out of many establishments despite the fact that minors are technically prohibited. Some cafes split waiting areas into under- and over-18, providing a space where teenagers can go to read manga and eat snacks for free while allowing men to peek up their skirts from the other side of the mirror. One girl says she can get around 20,000 yen from a day at a deai kissa, while a friend has gotten up to 50,000 yen before. Educational analyst Naoki Ogi is interviewed, saying that an estimated 80 percent of men visit matchmaking cafes looking to buy sex. This cafe even uses a high school girl as advertising to attract customers.

Yet there is little hard evidence that these cafes are being used as places to pick up prostitutes, underage or not. A number of people do seem to be using deai kissa for their original intention based on the amount of sites warning against sakura and kaiten-jo. With revisions to the adult-entertainment laws in January putting deai kissa in the same category as love hotels and soaplands, a crackdown on minors in the cafes may succeed in stamping out the problem there, but simply drive enjo-kosai activities to another place.

Date: Saturday, September 25 from 7-9pm

Location: JICA Chikyu Hiroba Seminar Room 301 (Map)
(One-minute walk from Exit 3, Hiroo Station, Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line)

Admission: 1,000 yen, 500 yen for students with ID

To register for the seminar, please fill out this form (Japanese only),

For more information, contact:
Polaris Project Japan Office
TEL：050-3496-7615
E-mail: info@polarisproject.jp