Skirts are left on”… “Unexpected measures” initiated by the adult entertainment industry in the wake of the exposé of the largest pin salon in the Shibuya industry.

The Impact of the Industry’s Largest Exposure

The year 2022 was marked by a number of large-scale sex-related exposures, including orgies and happening bars. All of them resulted in the arrest of the perpetrators on charges of public indecency, but did you know that a major group in the adult entertainment industry was also exposed?

On November 5, 2022, the pink salon “Sukkiri” in Dogenzaka, Shibuya-ku, was exposed. According to investigators, “a female staff member in her 20s was raiding the very place where she was providing sexual services to a male customer in his 30s. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department arrested the two men, as well as the manager and eight others, on suspicion of public indecency.

About a month after the store was uncovered, the chairman and president of “Komei,” the corporation that ran “Sukkiri,” were also arrested on suspicion of public indecency and other charges. Komei” operates more than 20 pin salons mainly in Tokyo. The company claimed to be the largest in the industry.

In the adult entertainment industry, it is a common practice for customers and female staff to engage in indecent acts as a “natural course of events. However, at “Sukkiri,” the box seats are semi-private rooms. The situation was such that the play was visible to an unspecified number of people.

Pinsaro is a type of adult entertainment establishment that provides sexual services by hand or mouth, and is known as a low-priced adult entertainment establishment compared to other types of establishments such as soapland, with prices ranging from several thousand yen for 30 minutes. After paying the fee in advance, customers are guided to a semi-private box seat in the store. A female staff member arrives and sexual services begin. …… is the basic flow of the service.

Circumstances that do not allow for completely private rooms

If this is the case, it would seem that if private rooms are installed, “public indecency” would not be established and the pinsalos would escape detection, but an administrative scrivener familiar with the Entertainment Establishments Control Law says, ” There are gray areas where private rooms cannot be installed.

In most cases, “Pinsaro” is licensed as a social eating and drinking establishment, like a cabaret club or a snack bar. The reason for this is that it is easier to obtain a business license than for sexually oriented businesses. When they open a restaurant, they report it as a social restaurant, but in reality, they are providing sexual services. As long as they are operating as a social restaurant, they have to follow structural requirements such as “Locking facilities (door locks, etc.) must not be installed at the entrance and exit of the rooms” and “Facilities (partitions, etc.) of 1 meter or more in height must not be installed to obstruct the view inside the rooms”. In other words, even if they wanted to install private rooms, they are not allowed to do so.

The pincarlo side is well aware of this point, and has taken measures to prevent indecent acts from being seen from the outside, such as installing a low partition of less than 1 meter between each box seat, within the scope of maintaining the appearance of a social eating establishment. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that they are completely blocked off, so if the police raid them, they are out of the picture.

A former employee of a certain pinzaro parlor in Tokyo revealed “another countermeasure against detection.

He said, “You can rent several stores under the name of an employee. Even if one of the stores is busted and goes out of business, a new corporation can be registered in the name of the other employees and reopen as a new tenant. The “new store” can be easily completed by simply moving the female staff and equipment.

This is exactly the method that is often used in the pinzaros where only the name of the store is changed but the girls remain the same. There are other advantages to having employees operate as “ostensible managers. Even if the store is busted, it is less likely that the investigation will lead to the real owner. In fact, the “Sukkiri” store that was In fact, “Sukkiri,” which was caught this time, had rented several other tenants on different floors in the building it occupies. However, the chairman and president of “Sukkiri” were also arrested. This shows how much effort the Metropolitan Police Department put into this latest bust. The “Sukkiri” is a “bitter pill to swallow” because of the gray zone.

A “bitter pill” due to the gray zone

In response to the recent revelations, rivals have been forced to take countermeasures.

When we called a popular restaurant in Tokyo and asked about the situation, they replied , “Since the “Sukkiri” expose, we have been discouraging our female staff and male customers from being completely naked. However, we have not made any particular changes to the interior of the store.

A regular customer adds, “I have not changed anything about the interior of the restaurant since mid-December 2010.

When I went there in mid-December 2010, a girl told me, ‘You can touch me, but you can’t be completely naked. I took off my underwear but kept my skirt on. The costumes, which imitated sailor uniforms, were designed to bare breasts when zipped down, but they were only zipped down to the point where we could see their cleavage.

The partition between each box seat was covered with a white sheet-like material. The same white-colored sheet was attached to the entrance of the box seats with Velcro tape and could be opened and closed. It was probably intended as a simple door. During play, this simple door was closed so that it could not be seen by others.

These minor measures will not solve the fundamental problem, but the store is still in business. On the other hand, while some of the pincaros that appear to be under the umbrella of the “Komei” group mentioned at the beginning of this article have changed their names and resumed operations, all of the stores in Tokyo appear to be closed (as of January 14). A peek at the websites of stores that are closed was accompanied by statements such as, “We are adjusting our schedule,” and “We will be closed for building maintenance work.

It seems that the struggle between the industry as a whole and the police will continue in the future.