<figure id="attachment_420198" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-420198" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="07769525"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/04/14541437040bb631a07df1132718d152.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-420198" class="wp-caption-text">Reception for &#8220;B,&#8221; a high school girls&#8217; tour club. Various menus are written (from the May 29, &#8217;15 issue).</figcaption></figure>
<p> The sex industry has been shaken up by a string of soap operators being targeted by scout groups and the proliferation of extreme services in men&#8217;s esthetic clinics, which are not sex clubs, including the arrest of two soapland operators in Ishikawa and Tokyo in January. How did the various types of sex industry come into being in the first place? Nonfiction writer Mizuho Takagi traces their roots. The theme of this issue is &#8220;JK business.</p>
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<h3><span class="strongInContent"> The Man Who Created the Original JK Reflex</span></h3>
<p> Laws and ordinances always have &#8220;frayed edges. They are flaws, inconsistencies, and loopholes. The &#8220;JK business,&#8221; which took advantage of these fissures, has devastated the adult entertainment industry, taking advantage of the fact that laws have not kept pace with the misdeeds.</p>
<p> The &#8220;JK business&#8221; uses high school girls to show their underwear through a magic mirror. They also put on striptease-like shows and perform live sex acts. The heat is on, despite repeated exposures under laws other than the Entertainment Establishments Control Law, such as the Employment Security Law and the Entertainment Establishments Law.&#8217; In 2002, it was nominated for the &#8220;You-Can New Words and Trendy Words Award. At the same time, the &#8220;Annual Report on Trafficking in Persons,&#8221; a report compiled by the U.S. State Department, ridiculed the industry as a hotbed of sex trafficking (aid-seeking). A study of its history reveals that it began as &#8220;JK Refre Akiba Treadle Gakuen Gymnastic Time,&#8221; a foot reflexology (a massage that uses the soles of the feet to massage the entire body) store in Akihabara, Tokyo.</p>
<p> The store is actually run by a friend, Takayuki Hayashi (pseudonym). The story goes back to 2008. Hayashi said, &#8220;That restaurant was run by Mr. Takagi in the fall of 2008.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I got the idea for that store when Mr. Takagi told me about a foot reflexology store in Akihabara.</span></p>
<p> The Akihabara foot reflexology store was the subject of a feature article in &#8220;Shukan SPA!&#8221; at the time, and many customers entered the store while the article was covering it, which I remember as being very popular. According to Hayashi&#8217;s recollection, after the author finished the interview, he dropped by a private photo store (i.e., a one-on-one photo session between a photographer and a model) that Hayashi was running at the time. While listening to Hayashi talk about the slump in sales at the private photo store, he said, &#8220;The therapists working there were all in their early twenties,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The therapists working there were mainly women in their early 20s, but there were some high school girls among them, so it was quite prosperous,&#8221; he said casually.</span></p>
<p> I remember casually saying to her, &#8220;The therapists are mostly women in their early twenties, but there are some high school girls among them. Indeed, he was talking about the inside story of a foot massage parlor.</p>
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<p> At the time, there were reflexology stores like Akihabara&#8217;s Foot Reflex where the girls wore maid uniforms, but there were no stores that featured high school girls as their main attraction. Hayashi immediately gathered a group of teens and had them wear gym clothes, and switched from an individual store to &#8220;JK Refre Akiba Treadle Gakuen: Time for Physical Education. At the time, &#8220;JK&#8221; was popular in the adult video industry, and he called his business &#8220;JK Refre&#8221; (JK Refre). Sales were not as strong as expected at the individual filming stores.</p>
<p> Although it was risky, Hayashi continued, <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t turn my back on the idea.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> We knew it was a risk, but we couldn&#8217;t turn our backs on it,&#8221; says Hayashi. &#8220;We knew it was a gray area that featured contact with real high school girls and panties, so we put on the &#8216;JK&#8217; crown even though we knew it was a bad idea. As a result, we attracted not only Akiba-style customers who liked maids but also pedophiles in general, so it was a good thing.</span></p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" What happened to the original JK Refre..."></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">The money lies in the evasion of the law.&#8221;</span></h3>
<p> We visited an apartment in Akihabara. This is where Akiba Trample School used to be located. But it was already empty. Hayashi had made the decision to quit before he was caught. That was around 2009.</p>
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<p> He was fined 500,000 yen and given a suspended sentence. Hayashi, however, was not offended, and used the arrest as the basis for building up his financial power.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent">There is a lot of money to be made in illegal activities,&#8221; he said. Reflexology, strolling, and even &#8216;tour clubs&#8217; where you see the panties of JK girls through a magic mirror are types of businesses that could be exposed at any time, and are genres that the big players, such as delicatessen and cabaret clubs, which are protected by the Entertainment Establishment Law, will never get involved in.</span> Hayashi explained the challenges he has faced in the past <span class="strongInContent">.</span></p>
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<p> Hayashi has not been able to give up on the appeal of this type of business, and even today, he continues to operate the &#8220;con café&#8221; (an abbreviation of &#8220;concept café,&#8221; which is halfway between a maid café and a girls&#8217; bar). Customers enjoy the company of the girls while sipping drinks, including alcohol, under various concepts, such as a patient and a nurse, a baseball fan and a cheerleader, and so on.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The &quot;JK tour store&quot; that sparked the boom"></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">A Boom Sparked by an Exposure</span></h3>
<p> The JK business boom was sparked by &#8220;A,&#8221; a high school girls&#8217; tour club founded by Takamitsu Fujii (pseudonym) in November 2010 in Fukutomi-cho, Naka-ku, Yokohama City. The store, which was busted on May 18 of the following year on suspicion of violating the Labor Standards Law (restriction of juveniles from working in hazardous and harmful jobs), also has a story behind its birth. Fujii, a pioneer of this business type, said of the conception, &#8220;It had been around for 20 years; during the heyday of bullselling in the 1990s, when high school girls walked around in their school uniforms, there were men following them, trying to see their underpants. I often saw such scenes, and I thought, &#8216;This could be a business.</p>
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<p> The store was later busted, but according to Fujii, &#8220;Mr. Takagi wrote an undercover article in FRIDAY, and that was the trigger. Fujii tells the details of the incident.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The detective clearly told me that he had caught him after reading the &#8220;FRIDAY&#8221; article. On the other hand, I made a lot of money because of the increase in customers as a result of the article in the magazine. Also, the only saving grace in this case was that I only got off with a summary prosecution (300,000 yen fine).</span></p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> If there had been statements that even one person was in pain or was forced to come to work, I would have been in jail for three years for violating the Child Welfare Law. During the interrogation, none of the girls who were taken along, including the signature girl, Xko (then 17 years old), showed any dislike toward the store, saying that they hated the store,&#8221; he said.</span></p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Interview with Xko, the signature girl of the JK Observation Club"></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">I mean, at least show your pants through the mirror, right?&#8221;</span></h3>
<p> In honor of this signature girl, Xko, the store was renamed from &#8220;A&#8221; to &#8220;X&#8221; at the time of the exposé.</p>
<p> I wanted to talk to Xko. I went back to my memory and found the data of the interview I had conducted with Xko after the exposé on my computer. The following is a question-and-answer session with me.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8211;Why did you start working here?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> A friend introduced me. I was working in a bakery at the time, but it seemed free and easy, and I got a back (half of the nomination fee paid by the customer).&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8211;Wearing a sailor suit and sitting in a gymnasium through a magic mirror. You knew that this would inevitably lead to the act of showing your pants, didn&#8217;t you?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Yes, I did. At first I didn&#8217;t like it, but I thought it would be okay to at least show my pants through the mirror.　Like that (laughs).</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8211;(Laughs.) &#8220;Did you know what the customers were doing behind the mirror?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Yes, I knew, because I could see them. I was naked, and I was shimmying with my hand. Once you get used to it, it&#8217;s not a big deal (laughs).</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8211;Would you still want to work at this kind of place even if you were arrested?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Yes, I would. To be honest, it was a really good part-time job. I could make more than 200,000 yen a month.</span></p>
<p> I asked him repeatedly about his sense of guilt. <span class="strongInContent">If I had, I wouldn&#8217;t have done it.</span> Xoko was only 17 years old when she immediately answered, &#8220;If I had, I wouldn&#8217;t have done it.</p>
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<p> In Tokyo, the &#8220;JK reflexology&#8221; and &#8220;JK strolling&#8221; businesses, which had been developed from the &#8220;A&#8221; report, played a war with the police.</p>
<p> After much thought and consideration, Fujii set up &#8220;B,&#8221; which he dubbed a &#8220;work shop. The idea was not to make high school girls &#8220;sit in a gymnasium,&#8221; but to show them light work, such as making paper cranes and bead accessories, through a magic mirror.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent">Once I realized how good it was, I was constantly thinking about how I could avoid being caught,&#8221;</span> Fujii said. In mid-May 2003, Fujii was arrested for the second time on charges of violating the Labor Standards Law (employment in dangerous and harmful work) by forcing high school girls under the age of 18 to do manual labor while showing their underwear to customers.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The police should not make a case. It&#8217;s not right for the police to make a case.</span></p>
<p> Fujii said that the business of selling sex to high school girls was &#8220;an idea. The police&#8217;s decision to expose this business, however, was, so to speak, a response to Fujii&#8217;s question.</p>
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<p> In <a href="https://friday.kodansha.co.jp/article/420228">the second part of the article, &#8220;The End of the</a> JK Business After It <a href="https://friday.kodansha.co.jp/article/420228">Was Destroyed by an Ordinance in &#8217;17,&#8221;</a> we will discuss what happened to the JK business after it was &#8220;destroyed&#8221; by the ordinance.</p>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Inside a high school girls&#39; tour club that was exposed."></div>
<figure id="attachment_420197" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-420197" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="f3c2e9bd"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/04/5eb876bb185975b84fbabfdef25be28d.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-420197" class="wp-caption-text">A,&#8221; a high school girls&#8217; tour club run by Fujii.&#8217; The club was busted in May 2011 (from the August 14, &#8217;15 issue).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_420206" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-420206" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="15fbf753"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/04/ebd38fbc8a9fdfd97b316c7c4e042c50.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-420206" class="wp-caption-text"> The interior of &#8220;B. Customers observed high school girls working through glass (from the May 29, 2003 issue).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_420207" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-420207" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="fa8f1006"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/04/7462c409c1aac3a155278007585f2966.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-420207" class="wp-caption-text"> The building where &#8220;B&#8221; was located. A large number of paper cranes were seized in the bust (from the May 29, 2003 issue).</figcaption></figure>


 Mizuho Takagi

 Nonfiction writer Mizuho Takagi reveals how various types of adult entertainment were born. In this report, she traces the roots of the JK business, which was born through the frayed edges of the law and has devastated the sex industry.

Report: The Birth of the Sex Industry and the JK Business: The Hint of &#8220;Akiba&#8217;s Foot Reflex&#8221;&#8230;Evolution of Evil by Taking Advantage of a Gap in the Law.

Report: The Birth of the Sex Industry and the JK Business: The Hint of “Akiba’s Foot Reflex”…Evolution of Evil by Taking Advantage of a Gap in the Law.

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