The “Tohyoko 2nd Generation” has begun to gather in Kabukicho again, and its amazing characteristics

The “Toyoko Kids,” which seemed to have disappeared due to a series of incidents and the tightening of police crackdowns, are beginning to show signs of a comeback.

On April 11, an 18-year-old boy who had been frequenting “Toyoko” was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department. The charge was that he forced a 14-year-old second-year junior high school girl to prostitute herself at an Internet cafe in Kabukicho. The girl offered prostitution to six customers whom the boy collected through social networking services for 20,500 to 30,000 yen a time. The girl was paid between 20,500 and 30,000 yen per time for prostitution, earning a total of 200,000 yen.

According to media reports, the arrested boy stated that he had learned that celebrities in the Toyoko area were paying tribute to girls who were their fans, so he decided to do the same.

Prostitution has long been a problem in Toyoko. Ayato (pseudonym, 21), a former “Toyoko kid,” said, “The guy who got arrested was doing things the way they were supposed to be done.

The guy who got arrested was not very good at what he was doing,” said Ayato, 21, a former “Toyoko Kid. There are a lot of guys in Toyoko who are doing better. The good ones work at con cafes and bars and make their fans pay for their services. They make it look as if the girls did the prostitution on their own and paid for it on their own, so that they are not held responsible for it. Some of the popular guys in the Toyoko area were given a lot of card keys by girls and told to come to the hotel where I was staying, and they became like Yu-Gi-Oh duelists (laughs).

The “Four Heavenly Kings of Toyoko” introduced in this series in the April 1 and 8 issues said that most of the early members who frequented Toyoko around ’18 are now active elsewhere. It seems that today’s Toyoko is a gathering of boys and girls of a slightly younger generation who admired the charismatic and popular early members.

Originally, Toyoko was a community for “having fun and drinking. Now, however, it is not necessarily a place where people go “just to drink,” but rather to “make friends and connect,” “go to see their favorite people,” and “shoot videos. In the early days of Toyoko, it was said that “strength of drink = height of status,” but now such a custom seems to have become a mere skeleton.

Such boys and girls, who could be called the “second generation of to-yo Yoko,” did not gather together out of fear of police crackdowns, but simply because they were too lazy to hang out on the street during the cold winter months. The simple reason seems to be that they came out to Toyoko because of the warmer weather.

A new charisma is also emerging: a peek at TikTok reveals a 20 A peek into TikTok reveals that an 18-year-old boy born in 2003 has been posting videos of himself dancing, with many comments from girls who admire him.

The comments of girls who admire him are numerous: “Oh, he’s so cute,” “He’s so cool, I’m dying,” “Can I meet him if I go to Toyoko?” ……. The profile of the account of the girl who left the comment reads “#09,” indicating that she was born in 2009 and will turn 13 this year.

It was only last year that incidents were happening frequently in Toyoko. For busy adults, a few months or a year may seem like a short time. However, in such a short period of time, the “Toyoko neighborhood” is already undergoing a renewal.

It is likely that “Toyoko” will continue to flourish as a “culture” in the future. Of course there are problems with adults who buy underage girls, but I hope that the gathering of a new generation will not lead to frequent incidents again. ……

Sasaki Chihuahua

Born in Tokyo in 2000.
He attended an integrated school in Tokyo from elementary school to high school, and then went on to Keio University.
At university, he is studying the sociology of the downtown area, including Kabukicho.
His book, ” Pien” to shakai” (“The Disease of ‘Pien’: Consumption and Approval of the SNS Generation”), is now on sale.