Annoying YouTubers Helped in Dispersing Prostitutes Around Okubo Park

Street prostitution (a.k.a. kojen) in the Kabukicho and Okubo Park area has undergone a major change this year.

Perhaps due to the recession caused by the COVID-19 crisis, it has become actively reported as more young women have started to stand in the street, and its visibility has skyrocketed in the last year or so. Recently, some nuisance YouTubers have been conducting a campaign to call out to men who are trying to prostitute themselves as a way to save girls who have nowhere else to go. On the other hand, many famous Tachinbo girls are being interviewed by YouTubers, and in some cases they are raking in the money for interviews there.

The dating scene has become a “popular content,” and men and women no longer come to the park for prostitution.

“Before, there used to be a lot of men and women coming around after 9:00 p.m. for prostitution,” he said. This is partly due to police busts, but it is more due to annoying YouTubers and tick-tockers. They chase girls and customers around shouting, ‘Prostitution is a crime! and chasing them around. I don’t want to be seen in videos or anything. I don’t think many people have moved locations.

There have been many cases where people have reported prostitution, causing a commotion, or scary people have come out and gotten into trouble.

For these reasons, the number of people in and around Okubo Park has decreased. However, this does not mean that women who engage in street prostitution have disappeared. It is a common practice in Kabukicho to disperse or congregate in other places when it becomes difficult to stay.

Why do young girls turn to street prostitution? The bottom line is money. Miyoko (a pseudonym, 20), a young girl who is a street tramp, says, “To be honest, I don’t really care if I get customers from the street.”

To be honest, I don’t really feel that taking customers on the street is dangerous. I think it’s the same in the sex industry. Even in the case of delicatessen, there are some bad customers. Moreover, nowadays, the stores don’t get customers, but you have to attract customers by yourself on SNS and update your own photo diary (a diary in which sex workers post photos and personal information), which is a pain in the ass. I think I would rather earn 20,000 yen an hour by taking customers myself than work at a delicatessen where I only get paid 10,000 yen an hour for doing such a tedious job.

Miyoko also uses an app to engage in papa-katsu(sugar daddy) activities in along with her other job.

I’m not really a “daddy’s girl,” but I’m mostly an encore. I have sex with adults. I make a schedule for papa katsudo on the app, and then do a one night sex when I have free time. That’s how I fill up my schedule. In our neighborhood, we call it “demon spinning” when you spin the customers around. Then, I could make 100,000 yen a day.

What do these women do with the money they earn? One often hears that they go to host clubs.

In the sex industry, you have to stay in the waiting room even when there are no customers coming in, but as a freelancer, you can set your own hours. For example, if I’m playing at a host club and a customer is caught on an app, I can leave the club. In between hostclubs, I meet an old man and have sex with him (laughs). Then I can easily get money to go to the host the next day.

Many women sell their bodies to go to host clubs, and on January 23, a former host was arrested on suspicion of forcing women into prostitution at a soap club. It is extremely common in Kabukicho for women to be forced to work in the sex industry to collect debts owed to host clubs. It would seem that the old men would be less inclined to engage in prostitution if they knew that the money they paid was going to the host.

Sasaki Chihuahua
Born in Tokyo in 2000. He attended an integrated school in Tokyo from elementary school to high school, and then went on to Keio University. At university, he is studying the sociology of the downtown area, including Kabukicho. His book, ” Pien” to shakai” (“The Disease of ‘Pien’: Consumption and Approval of the SNS Generation”) is now on sale.