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Web-only Exclusives
November 30, 2000

From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War
A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix

From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead
Bad news for the Philippines - and some others

From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies
Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights?

Asiaweek Time Asia Now Asiaweek story

Willing Partners

By Murakami Mutsuko



(Antonio Pagnotta Da Fonseca for Asiaweek)

THE SELLER Lisa (right) says she sees nothing wrong with having paid sex

Kei insists it all began innocently enough. That was a year ago, when a classmate at her Tokyo school introduced her to a 40-year-old married man. “He looked harmless,” says the 17-year-old, “and I suppose I was curious about what it would be like to date an older man.”

At first he took her to fancy restaurants and gave her little gifts such as a Louis Vuitton purse. Then, after a few months, they went to a private room in a karaoke club. There, he pleaded with her to let him touch her breasts. Afterwards, he gave her about $80.

Today, they have sex almost every week, and he pays her up to $250 each time. Normally, her ojin (old man) contacts her on her mobile phone and they meet in a love hotel where they hire a room for a short time. “I know it’s bad,” she says. “I would like to get out, and I will when I have a boyfriend that I truly love.” Kei admits she is worried that her school or parents will find out about her double life. And there is the risk of AIDS. But, meanwhile, she will just carry on taking the money. “I need it,” she says.

Kei is part of a phenomenon that is sweeping across Japan’s cities. More and more teenage girls from perfectly decent backgrounds are having paid sex with older men -- not just for the money, but sometimes for kicks or simply because their friends are doing it. It is called enjo kosai (meaning “assisting relations”). And it has got the authorities worried.

Says Yamamoto Tomoo, a Tokyo high school teacher: “What these kids are doing reflects the importance that Japan has attached to materialistic values over the past few decades. They are doing what the older generation has taught them.” Hashimoto Turu, a senior youth counselor in Tokyo, says the availability of sexually explicit material is partly to blame. But so are parents. “They know little of their children’s lives,” he says.

The law makes it easy for the trade to thrive. Sexual intercourse with girls as young as 14 is legal in parts of Japan, including Tokyo. Being paid for sex is not illegal, though pimping or providing premises for prostitution is. And in a country where many men have a fetish about schoolgirls -- to the point of purchasing their used underwear -- there is a large pool of buyers.

Lisa was a seller for two years. The 18-year-old Tokyo student says she first tried enjo kosai out of curiosity. Then she began to rely on the income to buy drugs -- amphetamines. She has no regrets about what she was doing. “If nobody gets hurt, there’s nothing wrong with it,” she says.

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