A writer who spent a year closely interviewing a Kabukicho “koinky girl” who was “making 5 million yen at a soap shop” saw a “deep darkness.

It was midday in August, and the area around the Tokyo Metropolitan Health Plaza Hygeia and the adjacent Okubo Park in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district was already a tourist attraction. Even though it was still early afternoon, women in their 20s and 30s were standing by the side of the street, and men who were looking for them were hanging out here and there, seemingly unattached to their surroundings.

This area, commonly known as “Kouen,” has become famous over the past year or so as a “street hooker zone” where, at night, there are more than 50 women standing around.

The media often talk about the freelancing of the sex industry, but I think it’s just a matter of the stage becoming more diverse. In the past it was the JK business, sex industry, dating cafes, or selling your body on dating sites, but now the most profitable spot – the stage – is “koukin”.

Nonfiction writer Mizuho Takagi, author of “Reporto Shinjuku Kabukicho: Street Prostitution” (Tetsujinsha, Inc.), says so. Takagi, who is known for her books on society and the sex industry, including “Prostitution Island: Report on Watarikanojima, the Last Peach Land,” has covered the area now known as “Kouen” many times over the past 20 years. He says that he was asked by an editor he knows to cover the area again this time because of the abundance of information on “kouen” in the media today.

To put it bluntly, I was tired of this kind of coverage. I didn’t want to do articles about what kind of girls were selling for how much, who they were paying off, and so on. So I decided to follow them closely, like a TV documentary.

Of course, it would be easy to just talk to them on the spot. But it is difficult to ask them anything more than that, and they don’t always tell you what they really think. Basically, all they do is lie. So many of them are like that. They are the kind of girls who would tell you that they used to be number one at a cabaret club or that they used to make 5 million yen at a soap opera, even though they don’t look like that kind of girl. If a girl says something outlandish that cannot be backed up, we don’t interview her or write about her story. That is why I think this book is filled with real stories.

It is even difficult to interview the “dating girls. For them, there is no merit in being interviewed at all, but rather only risk. In this book, Takagi closely follows a 31-year-old woman named Kotone for a year. Although she could earn 50,000 yen a day if she worked at a delicatessen, she almost never went to work, instead earning her money through dating cafes and “koryu” (companionship). Takagi had originally met her for tea when she was with an acquaintance, and they were acquainted with each other, but even so, the close interview was difficult.

I wrote about it in my book. As I wrote in the book, they didn’t keep their promises, they would skip the interview saying, “I can’t leave my house,” and they even asked me to cancel the interview itself. But as I followed her closely, I realized that it was more than just a whim.

Kotone was born and raised in an upscale residential neighborhood in Yokohama. However, she grew up being abused by her mother from an early age, and her parents’ mental health finally broke down when she was in college. Her mother was schizophrenic, and Kotone was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and developmental disabilities (ASD) as well.

She said, “I can’t make appointments. For example, let’s say we meet at this coffee shop at 2:00 p.m. in two weeks’ time. Even then, he never shows up. Even if I could remember, it would be meaningless because I can’t get up in the morning or leave the house. Sometimes they are in a stable state of mind or spirit, and sometimes they are not. If they are in a stable state of mind or spirit, they may come on the appointed date and time.

Through this interview, I realized that such disorders and illnesses probably affect their behavior. So I was able to treat them with gentleness. It is not that I was not kind to them, but I am only human, and there are times when I get angry. But I was able to be less angry at them. I think it would be correct to say that I came to have a better understanding of children who play stand-up.

Kotone and her friends were not only prostitutes, but were also committing what we call “gratuitous girls” fraud. They told us about their criminal activities, so I think we were able to understand them to some extent and get some of their true feelings out of them.

Until now, the media has not often discussed the relationship between crime and sex work and mental illness, developmental disabilities, and attachment disorder, which is a problem in which a child has trouble forming an attachment with his or her caregivers during infancy and early childhood. Mr. Takagi himself had sensed this in the past, but had never touched on it.

In 2006, “Developmental Disabilities and Juvenile Crimes” (Toshihiko Tabuchi, NNN Documentary Reporting Team/Shinchosha) was published, and what used to be a taboo subject has become something that needs to be talked about. A psychiatrist told me that although there is no clear data, girls with such disorders often grow up and engage in the sex industry, such as adult entertainment and prostitution.

People in the field all know this. Managers, owners, etc. However, the media rarely focused on them. There is no need to go to the trouble of telling customers about it, and there is a long history and background. I had never written about such things before, but now that I have a better understanding of them through this interview, I feel that I should definitely write about them and let more people know about them.

If there are “koin-joshi” girls who are forced to stand on the street because of illness or disability, it is easy to think that they should be connected to welfare, but Takagi says that this is not the case. The reason why these girls have to stand up is not necessarily because they are in need, but because they want to pay tribute to their “admirers” such as hostesses, men’s concept cafes, and men’s underground idols.

The reason why they do so is because they seek emotional support and a source of strength from their hosts. They are not looking for welfare or anything like that. They are looking for a freer life, where they are not tied down by time and can use social networking services. They are not looking for welfare, they are looking for a more free life where their time is not tied up and they can use social networking sites. They are not looking for welfare, but to earn money by being a “dating girl. That’s why they are choosing to earn money by working as “dating girls” instead of welfare.

Some of them say they were helped by the welfare system. I think there are many children who are seeking temporary protection, such as not having a house to live in, not being able to earn money, or not having enough money. However, they do not want that kind of life to continue forever.

For example, a volunteer group distributes food at Okubo Park every Saturday, and they say that none of the “koin-joshi” come, but only Toru Yoko minors. So, I’m not looking for them. Rather, they are looking for customers who will buy them.

The darkness that these women face is deeper than we realize.