20 Million Yen for a Fake Marriage 200,000 Yen for a Virgin: The Human Rights Price of Kabukicho

Since last year, “Itadaki Joshi Riri-chan,” also known as defendant Mai Watanabe (26), has caused a huge stir in the Kabukicho area. She was convicted of defrauding multiple men of a total of more than 150 million yen and selling the methods as a manual, for which she was also charged with aiding and abetting fraud.

During the trial, it was revealed that Riri-chan had a husband of Vietnamese nationality. She explained about her husband, saying, “I am still married, but I don’t know where he lives, what he does, or how to contact him,” and continued, “I met a Japanese businessman through a delivery health service, and he told me, ‘If you marry a Vietnamese man, I will give you money,’ and I agreed.”

A person familiar with the sale of family registers in Kabukicho, known as Seitaro (alias, 34), revealed the truth.

“When a foreigner marries a Japanese person to obtain a spouse visa, the first benefit is that there are no work restrictions. The second is that the requirements for naturalization or obtaining a permanent residency visa are eased. I’ve seen a few women who got married to foreign men for this purpose and received compensation. The going rate is around 3 to 5 million yen, but in Riri-chan’s case, I heard she received about 20 million yen.”

The reason Riri-chan was willing to go this far to get money was reportedly to lavish it on her host. In this city, where death, money, and sex swirl together, it may be that not only life but everything else is considered cheap.

 

Behind-the-scenes work of nailing busts

In Kabukicho, such acts of selling oneself are not uncommon. Aika (pseudonym, 24), a hosiery fanatic, says she was once told about a deal.

“I get a lot of bad deals. They want me to make a baby with a rich guy. A few weeks ago, it was popular to shoot in a house with mirrors. There were several girls playing with one guy with their hands and mouths, and it was easy because there were several girls and they didn’t have to do the real work.

The requirements for the girls they were looking for were that they had to be well-dressed and have hair on the bottom. Some girls even wore fake hair to the interview. I got 10,000 yen if I got naked at the interview, and it seems I got 70,000 to 80,000 yen if I proceeded to film. But then I heard a rumor that the person who filmed the illegal video had been arrested, and I remember being scared that I didn’t think it was that one.”

This type of filming is called video-related and carries a high risk of being exposed. On the other hand, the risk is low and the payoff is good for those with special propensities.

“One of my friends worked as an M-male in a hardcore SM brothel. She was meeting with customers who wanted to do things that were forbidden in the store, without going through the store. They would make them hit a nail in the bust, and for 300,000 yen or 500,000 yen, they could do whatever they wanted for a day. He laughed and said it was tough on the days when the enema went on and on. At the time, it was for the sake of the host who was in charge, so he was able to do it.” (23-year-old sex worker Mikoto, pseudonym).

An extension of these deals was the overseas migrant work. In particular, in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Laos, there were many cases in which the migrants had their passports and cell phones taken away and were unable to return to their home countries after going there.

Recently, these cases have significantly decreased, but dangerous offers still persist within the country. Fumika (pseudonym, 20) revealed her experience with one such offer.