Tokyo's regional red light districts now flashing blue

By Ryann Connell
March 30, 2005

Tokyo's netherworld has been hit hard in recent months by a cop crackdown, but now red-light districts in smaller cities on the outskirts of the capital are feeling the brunt of law enforcers' clean-up campaigns, according to Weekly Playboy.

Yokohama's Koganecho district was known throughout Japan for its streets packed with mostly Asian hookers, but crimebusters have now turned out the lights that once glittered in the area.

"Police started watching the district toward the end of last year, then began raiding one place after another. Then, they posted a 24-hour guard on the area and there is not a single brothel operating in Koganecho anymore," the owner of a chicken restaurant in the district tells Weekly Playboy. "On weekends, the streets used to be so jam-packed with people, it was like being in the middle of (Tokyo's posh) Ginza. Now, the only people you see out there are cops. My sales have plummeted by half."

The women who used to work in Koganecho have apparently headed for greener pastures.

"One of my customers said the girls have gone to places like Nagoya and Nagano. They're all over the place," a woman working in a Koganecho restaurant says. "The streets are dark and lonely at nights. I think this place has passed its use-by date."

Even the crimefighters patrolling the streets of Koganecho are unaware of how long the district will be targeted.

"My boss told me to keep a watch on the area, so that's what I'm doing," an officer patrolling the red-light ghost town tells Weekly Playboy. "Personally, I see no problem with what's going on here provided it all happens among consenting adults."

Koganecho is not the only town famous for its flesh trade currently falling under a police searchlight. Nishi Kawaguchi, a Saitama Prefecture brothel zone famous enough to give its name to a particular sexual technique, is also copping it hard.

"The cops have hit really hard over the past two or three months. They shut down a complete franchise of eight brothels here in early March," a Nishi Kawaguchi sex trade worker says. "That place was big enough to buy full back-page ads on adult entertainment industry magazines, so the fact the cops have run it out of business has sent shockewaves through the entire trade."

And it seems the crackdown on the Saitama sanctuary of smut has only just started, with the prefectural police only due to formally set up a task force targeting tarts from next month.

"(Politicians leading the charge against sex businesses) appear to be hoping that respectable restaurants will move in and take over all the empty outlets when cathouses are shut down," the trade worker says. "What they don't seem to realize is the places they're shutting down were what had been attractive enough to draw people to the area in the first place. If all the sex businesses are shut down, nobody's going to come here at all."

Azumi, a 19-year-old Nishi Kawaguchi sex worker, sounds an even more ominous warning.

"If they shut down places like mine, you watch the number of girls that will end up working underground and getting raped," she tells Weekly Playboy. "I can't understand why they want to put an end to Nishi Kawaguchi."

Mainichi Shimbun

Comment on this story, click here.

Copyright 1999-2004, Mainichi Shimbun.  All rights reserved.  No content may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission.  Please contact us via the link below for re-print and syndication policies.