The Grishita Kids Trapped in a Hellish Prostitution Tour: One Meal a Day and Over 100 Sexual Encounters

The “Grishita Kids” have become a social problem because they are not fed properly

On February 14, Osaka Prefectural Police arrested Eito Takimoto (25), an unemployed man from Sakai City, and Junji Niiyama (21), a company employee from Daito City, on suspicion of violating the Anti-Prostitution Law (managing prostitution) and kidnapping for profit, after forcing a girl who frequented the area known as “Grishita” in Minami, Osaka, into prostitution.

“In June of last year, Takimoto and Niiyama approached a 16-year-old girl who was hanging around the promenade under the Glico sign in Dotonbori, Osaka, an area known as ‘Grishita.’ They enticed her by saying, ‘There’s a lucrative job,’ and ‘You can easily earn 1 million yen.’ Afterward, Niiyama drove the girl to the Tohoku region, where from June 15 to 25, they traveled across various prefectures, repeatedly engaging in prostitution,” said a reporter from the national news desk.

Takimoto and the other suspects recruited prostitutes by pretending to be women on dating sites. They would send the girls to hotels or homes where customers were waiting for them and have them perform sex acts on them. It is believed that the girls were forced to have sex with about 10 men a day, or more than 100 men in 10 days.

“The girl was forced to engage with men from 10 a.m. to around 10 p.m. every day, with hardly any time to rest. She was given only one meal a day, usually a convenience store bento. Niiyama, who acted as the driver, followed Takimoto’s instructions and traveled across all the prefectures in Tohoku. The girl would receive 15,000 yen for each act of prostitution, which she handed over directly to Niiyama,” the same reporter said.

“I desperately wanted to go home.”

By late June, after the prostitution tour had ended, Niiyama and the girl returned to Osaka. Out of the 1.5 million yen earned from prostitution, Niiyama took 900,000 yen, leaving the girl with only 600,000 yen—far from the 1 million yen they had promised when they approached her at Grishita.

“The following month, the girl was questioned by an Osaka Prefectural Police officer, which led to the case being uncovered. The girl confessed, ‘I was taken far away and forced into prostitution, having to service around 10 men a day. I was only given one meal a day, and by the end, I was so exhausted that I just wanted to go home.’

The girl had been frequenting Grishita since the summer of the year before and ran away from home in November. She had been scraping by with papa-katsu (paid dates with older men) and other means. It seems that during this time, Takimoto and his accomplices approached her with the offer of prostitution. She admitted, ‘I gave in to their offer because I needed money for daily expenses, food, and supporting my favorite staff at a men’s concept café.”

Takimoto and his accomplices are also believed to have forced other girls who gathered at Grishita into prostitution, and further charges are being pursued. We must not allow such despicable crimes, which exploit the vulnerabilities of struggling young girls, to continue.