Tokyo's sex industry is under attack

[Arod]

Tokyo's sex industry is under attack. In a huge cleanup campaign, police have descended on massage parlors, brothels and porno shops, mainly in the districts of Kabukicho and Ikebukuro. In April alone, 162 establishments and 102 video shops were raided.
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Spa! notes that the dragnet is not limited to the shops' managers and staff, but covers the owners of the buildings where the establishments are located.

"Even the property owners are being investigated as abettors of crimes," grumbles one man, the owner of an illegal establishment. "It verges on harassment."

This makes Spa! wonder about the fate of the real-estate agencies, whose clients are being so ruthlessly targeted in the crackdown. Surely these agencies are also being driven out of business, right?

Wrong. In fact, many of these agencies have shrewdly turned the crackdown into a bonanza.

"When establishments get nailed, we get more opportunities by getting to handle the next business to move in," explains one anonymous real-estate agent.

He is part of a flourishing underground industry, revealed by the magazine, that caters to the property needs of Japan's sex industry, its workers, and other members of society that legitimate real agencies refuse to touch.

In an investigative piece, Spa! devotes six densely written pages to these shady real-estate agencies, detailing how they skirt the law through some very clever and elaborate loopholes in rental and lease contracts.

The most obvious clue to the underground industry's existence is the ubiquitous and crudely printed handbills, advertising "property for the nightlife industry," stuck on telephone poles throughout the city. When a Spa! reporter rings cell-phone numbers written on some of the handbills, he is connected to an agency, whose name the magazine does not disclose.

The reporter arranges an appointment at its office, where an agent says, "We deal in cabarets, pink salons, pink boxes [cubicles where women offer sexual services], casinos, and 'sell shops' (where illegal DVDs are sold)."

Making these dealings possible is a tricky loophole. Technically, the agencies are not involved in the buying and selling of the actual properties from their owners -- that could get them arrested -- but rather of all the furnishings and equipment inside properties where sex establishments are located. So by dealing in the items that make up a business, the agencies are in fact dealing in the businesses themselves.

Another bit of trickery involves foreigners wanting to rent apartments. Although agencies that provide phony guarantors for lease contracts have long been common, some of the underground agencies now provide phony renters: Japanese nationals whose names and personal info appear on contracts.

Why the need for bogus renters? Because many legitimate real-estate agents refuse to rent to foreigners.

"There have been lots of instances of trouble between foreigners and building managers, due to differences in lifestyle," says one agent. "To avoid having to deal with this . . . the real-estate agencies simply say 'no way' to foreigners."

Women working in the sex business also often require some finagling when renting a place to live. Their hurdle usually concerns providing a guarantor.

"I don't want to get a guarantor because I am keeping my job secret from my parents," a Kabukicho sex worker explains.

Like many women in her trade, she turned to a host, a male version of a bar hostess, for help. For a commission, he arranged for a guarantor.

It's actually a common arrangement -- hosts moonlighting as facilitators of rental contracts for their customers who also work in the twilight hours.

"It's better to know the addresses of our customers, so if their unpaid tabs increase too much we can just barge into their places [to get the money repaid]," a Kabukicho host says.

Worse, if a woman defaults on either her bar tab or rent, hosts have been known to conspire with the property owners to pimp the woman out and collect her earnings for repayment.

When it comes to the business of roofs over people's heads, some people are willing to go to some frightening extremes.