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Flea markets sink into lawless sleaze pits
September 22, 2005. Mainichi News
Japan's flea markets have become "lawless zones," according to Weekly Playboy (10/4), with perverts, purveyors of putrid porno and pimps of drugs like magic mushrooms running amok.
A fine recent example was the man arrested in Fukuoka for taking sneak shots of a woman's cleavage every time she bent down to show off an item she was selling at a flea market in the city.
Apparently, guys who get off on catching a glimpse of women's underwear captured in everyday situations are targeting flea markets across the country.
"Many of the stalls at flea markets are staffed by women, lots of who sit down on the ground to sell their goods. Wearing light summer clothes, these women almost invariably give off a flash of cleavage every time they move," Hiroshi, a self-professed "breast hunter" tells Weekly Playboy. "Flea markets are regarded as a kind of Heaven for anybody with a fetish for underwear shots."
Kotaro Toriumi, a writer well versed on the current campaign to clean up Tokyo's seedier elements, has little doubt that the capitals flea markets are causing trouble.
"Flea markets are lawless areas. You can find all sorts of pornographic games and illegal drugs on sale there," Toriumi tells Weekly Playboy. "Pornographic games being sold are all those ones that companies stopped selling because they focused on kidnapping and killing little girls, just like a couple of real incidents that had occurred. And the drugs you can find are the ones that used to be sold in streetside stalls until the Tokyo Metropolitan Government outlawed them. These stalls have disappeared since the ban came in place in June, but the drugs they had left over are now turning up for sale in flea markets."
Toriumi argues that the most likely flea markets to pick up contraband are Tokyo Metropolitan Government-sanctioned events held regularly at Meiji and Yoyogi parks. Metropolitan government officials don't deny the possibility that they may be serving as conduits to illegal transactions.
"We've received a few complaints about the flea markets," a metropolitan government spokesman tells Weekly Playboy. "The trouble is, the flea markets are getting bigger and bigger by the year, so it's almost impossible for the organizers to track down exactly what's being sold. I suppose we'll have to spring a surprise raid sometime soon."
Organizers of the markets, however, are not so quick to concede. They say they're running a tight ship.
"We take down the names and contact numbers of every person who operates a stall at our flea markets and we also run a patrol on the day of the events. There are, I admit, some organizers who don't care who sell what at their markets. That's where you see the illegal stuff being sold," Masayuki Toda, head of Japan's first professional flea market organizers Recycle Shimin Undo no Kai, tells Weekly Playboy. "The biggest problem though, is that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is supposed to be scrutinizing the whole business. But it simply hands out permission to anybody who fills in the right application form to open a flea market stall." (By Ryann Connell)
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