Japan: Businessman busted for child prostitution
By Ryann Connell February 9, 2006
An accused pedophile delighted to catch out a junior high school girl pretending to be over 18 responded by dressing her up as a kindergartner after he paid her for a romp in a hotel, according to Shukan Gendai.
Taisei Kato, an employee of the Nikkei -- a staid business daily was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department for breaking the law banning child pornography and child prostitution after he allegedly paid the 15-year-old schoolgirl for sex.
The weekly says Kato, while still based at the Nikkei's Tokyo headquarters in January last year, met the girl when she was working as a model who posed for amateur shutterbugs. It adds she also accepted freelance jobs that were little more than a front for enjo kosai, the euphemism Japanese use to describe what is mostly teenage prostitution.
"Kato asked the organizer of one of the model sessions to arrange an individual session with the girl, which allowed him to meet her alone," an investigation insider tells Shukan Gendai. "He called her out to a hotel and paid her 50,000 yen for each of the five times she met him."
Kato joined the Nikkei in 1990. He worked in the public relations department before being posted to the general affairs section in 2002. In March last year, he was transferred to the daily's Nagoya bureau.
"He wasn't the type to stand out at the bureau. I heard about the case on the news and was really shocked," a Nikkei insider tells the weekly.
Kato's neighbors aren't hiding their surprise, either.
"He wasn't the liveliest of people, but he's got a son in elementary school and a daughter attending kindergarten and I used to see them all out cycling together on his days off," one neighbor tells the weekly. "I can't understand why he's done this..."
Kato, blessed with a fine family and decent social standing, also appears to have had his own uncontrollable urges.
"When he met the girl in the hotel, he brought five cameras with him. He had tripods and all the gear and it took him about an hour to set everything up. He spent five hours taking photos of the girl, getting her to strip and spread her legs," the investigation insider tells Shukan Gendai. "He also used to make her dress up in all sorts of costumes, like a junior high school girl's uniform, school swimsuit or even the kindergartner's smock he got the organizer of the modeling sessions to prepare for him."
Nikkei have promised to crack down on Kato.
"We want to check the facts behind the story and treat it with all possible severity," a Nikkei spokesman says.
Kato's poor wife, however, was apparently shattered when a Nikkei reporter visited her home to tell her about her husband's Jan. 15 arrest.
"The cops," Shukan Gendai reports the shocked woman saying, "have got my husband."
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