Why are the “standing girls” in Okubo Park getting so aggressive?

Photos of these girls are regularly posted on social networking sites and have become a hot topic of conversation. Although a recent major bust has reduced the number of these girls, they still continue to engage in prostitution around the park.

The police patrol the area, and a major change has occurred in the way these girls continue to play stand-up, even at the risk of being arrested and taken in for questioning. They are now showing excessive reactions to cameras and smart phones.

After 9:00 p.m., when the police patrols end, women begin to line up at equal intervals around Okubo Park, waiting for customers. At its peak, there were many of them on the Okubo Hospital side of the park, but now they have changed areas and many of them line up in the alley next to the park.

Many chilled-out visitors and onlookers have come to catch a glimpse of the scene they saw on social media, and perhaps because of the boom in taking pictures, when a man walking down the street takes out his smartphone, the women standing in the street shout offensive words.

When the reporter visited the street,

The women in the street were shouting, “Chee-gyu (Internet slang for making fun of nerds, people with dark personalities, and people who are plain), go back to the Internet. You only get your jollies on the Internet and it makes me sick!

he shouted to a young man passing by.

The photos that are regularly posted on social networking sites are uncensored and without permission from the girls. The girls also seem to see such X postings, and when they see someone take out a smartphone, they begin to watch that person carefully.

This is probably the result of a sense of crisis among these girls, who do not want to be seen by many people if their posts are spread on the Internet.

Another major other change is taking place among the girls. That is that they are forming groups with a few of their closest friends.

Before the large-scale busts began, most of them were standing alone in most cases and had no horizontal connections, but now they spend their free time with about two or three close friends, conversing and spending time together when no customers are coming.

A reporter in the society section of a national newspaper who is familiar with Shinjuku Kabukicho analyzed the situation as follows.

The remaining ones are professional stand-up dancers,” he said. It seems that they are earning quite a lot of money by working at brothels and also doing stand-up job. Before the bust, there were many college students and female office workers from Saitama and Yokohama who thought, ‘I have no money, so I have to make money with my body,’ but now there are almost no such women. Those who remain are prepared to be arrested, so they have become less fluid and have naturally become familiar with each other.”

These women quickly disappear when they see police officers patrolling the area on a regular basis. Perhaps because of this situation, many women do not seem to want to stay on the street for long, and when approached, they immediately reply, “Ho extra *20,000 (*It’s 20,000 yen, not including hotel charges).

Although the police are stepping up their efforts, including large-scale busts and regular patrols, it will be difficult to reduce the number of standing men to zero, since it is not illegal to just stand there. It is likely that the weasel words of the police will continue for some time to come.