Gain comes at cost of pain, teen tarts discover
"One evening, I was made to do it with at least five customers," the girl, named Aiko (a pseudonym) sobs to Shukan Jitsuwa (8/2). "I'd never had that many partners before. Some fingered me deep inside and I started bleeding. The doctor said the opening to my uterus had become inflamed. It took 10 days for the bleeding to stop..."
Until last March, Aiko had been a student at a middle school in Tokyo's Toshima-ku. She subsequently went to work in a brothel named "Otona Club" in the Kinshicho entertainment district. The police staged a raid, and the 15-year-old found herself facing charges of prostitution.
Until its ignominious shutdown by the authorities, Otona Club was situated on the third floor of a building close to JR Kinshicho station in Tokyo's Sumida-ku, above a drug store and an internet cafe. The room consisted of a counter with stools, a small cloakroom, a central area with a large table and two cubicles toward the back, concealed by curtains. Each cubicle contained a cot and wheeled portable wash basin with a mirror.
The secret of Otona Club's success was not that it abetted prostitution by under-age girls -- which has been going on for who knows how long -- but that it set its rates low to ensure a quick turnover, high-volume business.
"Customers would be escorted in and see the girls seated around the table," Aiko relates. "A shop employee would point to us one by one, and say, 'That one's in middle school, so she goes for 30,000 yen, but the one beside her's in high school, so she's 25,000 yen.' They'd take their pick and go into the cubicle -- there was no bath or shower -- and spend 15, maybe 20 minutes with the girl."
When the two cubicles were both occupied, impatient customers were permitted to take the girls out to nearby love hotels.
Out of the charges per each session, the shop took a 7,000-yen cut.
Still, the sheer volume of turnover ensured the girls made pretty good money. Another working teen named Hideko tells the magazine she earned nearly 1 million yen during the month of April.
Some customers brought cameras to photograph the girls' genitals and others would request they dress up in school uniforms and other costumes. In extreme cases, the "play" got rough.
"From March of this year, two girls who at that time were still in middle school were particularly popular," Hideko relates. "But some of their johns overdid it, and more than once we saw them come back from the hotel in tears. Some of the customers probed them with their fingers and became outraged if the girls didn't seem to become aroused or have an orgasm.
"I had similar experiences, where men expected me to act out their fantasies like some kind of porno film actress."
"As far as we know, at least 13 girls were working there, all between the ages of 15 and 18," a reporter on the city desk tells the magazine. "Some were still in school and others were unemployed."
Most of the girls, according to Shukan Jitsuwa, found the jobs via their cell phones, but a few of were recruited by friends and acquaintances.
"Some girls said they wanted money to buy brand-name fashion goods, so I set them up at jobs," an 18-year-old named Chieko tells the magazine.
"These girls are daughters of ordinary salarymen, and attend Tokyo public high schools," she continues. When their parents found out, they became infuriated, carrying on and screaming things like, 'I'm gonna kill you and then I'll die too.' The girls were also kicked out of school. I don't think that was fair."
Otona Club's manager Shingo Kato, age 29, was arrested by the MPD's juvenile division on multiple charges. He had allegedly told the girls, "Work here and you'll make good money. You'll be able to buy lots of new stuff right away."
Also arrested were street recruiter Tomoaki Shima, age 22, his assistant, an 18-year-old girl whose name was withheld as she was a minor, and three others.
Between October 2006 and May 2007, police allege the teen tart trade by Kato and his tawdry team took in 10 million yen.
"I used to see groups of two or three teenage girls coming and going, and hear giggles coming from the door," a resident of the building tells Shukan Jitsuwa. "I thought they were just chums, you know, having all-night pajama parties or something." (By Masuo Kamiyama, People's Pick contributor)
