Schoolgirls sniff gold in pantie crackdown

The Mainichi Shimbun
June 19, 2004
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/archive/news/2004/06/20040619p2g00m0dm999000c.html

Naughty Japanese schoolgirls lost one of their greatest sources of pocket money earlier this month after the Tokyo Metropolitan Government outlawed the trade in soiled knickers from the underaged, according to Shukan Taishu (6/28). Tokyo's Burusera Ordinance, which takes its name from the Japanese-English contraction of the words "bloomer seller," bans the purchase of used panties from anybody under the age of 18, as well as any activities that would facilitate such a sale.

Offenders of the ordinance enacted June 1 face a fine of up to 500,000 yen.

"There were about 30 burusera shops, mostly in Shibuya and Shinjuku, but more than 10 of these have already shut down. A lot of online burusera sites have already stopped trading, too," adult entertainment industry writer Yukio Murakami tells Shukan Taishu. "Authorities have apparently cracked the whip. I think this probably means the end of burusera stores."

Burusera shops look bust and sordid schoolgirls appear out of pocket. But that doesn't mean the trade in soiled skids won't continue.

"Underage sellers aren't punished under the ordinance, so the girls are pretty composed about the whole thing," says Gomez Yamada, a writer specializing on teen girl topics. "The ordinance may have shut down the burusera stores, but it has only sparked a thriving trade in schoolgirls using mobile phone sites to conduct direct sales to customers without needing a middleman. They'll arrange to meet in some dark spot like a karaoke box or beside a building, then remove and hand over their panties on the spot in exchange for payment. What's more, they're charging 5,000 to 10,000 yen a pair, about five times what they would have got from a burusera shop. Some girls are even happy the ordinance has come into effect because it's done away with the burusera shops that were eating into their profits."

Panty selling girls have already found ways to circumvent the crackdown on selling skives.

"We put photos of us in our school uniforms up for sale at about 4-5,000 yen each, then provide some dirty panties as a free giveaway to buyers. That way, we're selling photos," a 17-year-old schoolgirl identified only as Miss A tells Shukan Taishu.

It could be an effective plan.

"Even the metropolitan government would have a hard time outlawing the sale of photos," a domestic news reporter on a major daily says.

Another 17-year-old, referred to as Miss B, claims she can still make a yen catering to those who don't want a whiff of trouble, but would settle for something else.

"You don't need to sell your panties. Now, the thing to do is just let the guys pay to smell the knickers you're wearing," she says. "Girls we call kagaseya (sniffers), get about 10,000 yen for a date with a guy. They take him into a karaoke box, then let him stick his head up their skirt and sniff between their legs to his heart's content."

Schoolgirl specialist Yamada warns the enterprising entrepreneurs not to get ahead of themselves.

"Everybody starts off thinking that just selling their panties is not too bad, but about 90 percent of those girls end up prostituting themselves within six months, no, three months of making their first panty sale," he tells Shukan Taishu. "Lots of girls feel liberated by dropping their panties. Next thing they know, though, they've dropped their guard, too."

June 19, 2004

WaiWai stories are transcriptions of articles that originally appeared in Japanese language publications. The Mainichi Daily News cannot be held responsible for the contents of the original articles, nor does it guarantee their accuracy. Views expressed in the WaiWai column are not necessarily those held by the Mainichi Daily News or Mainichi Newspapers Co.

Schoolgirls' decade of decadence: panty sales have punters panting

The Mainichi Shimbun
April 2, 2003
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/archive/news/2003/04/20030402p2g00m0dm999000c.html

Bloomer seller, or burusera, shops that popped up across Japanese cities in the '90s taught schoolgirls that they could make money selling their soiled panties or school uniforms, according to Spa! (4/8).

Once schoolgirls realized that sex sells, it didn't take many long to fall into the trap of selling themselves, sparking the mid-decade boom in enjo kosai, a euphemism for prostitution that literally translates as "compensated dating."

From there, the Internet provided schoolgirls with online sites and the anonymity they needed to safely continue their lascivious pursuits for cash, making some wonder whether schoolgirl prostitution is a Japanese ailment or part of the culture.

Over the coming few days, we'll look at how Spa! has seen the decade of decadence where schoolgirls turned from demure, bobby-soxed innocents to insatiable sex workers contributing by some estimates as much as 65.3 billion yen to Japan's underground economy.

Mayuko Horita, now a 28-year-old employee of a major apparel maker, was one of the first schoolgirls to get into the panty selling scene in the early '90s.

"At the time, the papers and TV were filled with stories about burusera. It must have been about the summer of '92, when I was in my second year of high school. A classmate asked me if I was interested in selling my panties. I didn't hesitate, nor did I see anything wrong with it. In fact, I was a little bit peeved that I hadn't found out earlier about such an easy way to make money. The shop was set up in an apartment in a Tokyo condominium. It was really sleazy," Horita tells Spa! adding that market rates at the time were about 100,000 for a complete uniform from a top private high school and around 1,000 yen for a pair of dirty undies.

"It was really unproductive wearing the same pair of panties around for two or three days, so some of the girls taught me that I should coat several pairs of panties with yogurt and dry them out with a hair dryer so it looked like they were vaginal discharges," Horita says.

Social reporter Yoshiki Fujii was well versed in the ejaculation industry of the time.

"Burusera shops had actually been around for about 10 years before the media started taking an interest in them in around 1992, thanks to places like Miki in Takadanobaba, which were suddenly attracting schoolgirls. But rather than panties or uniforms, the shops made their big money getting schoolgirls to appear in dirty videos," he tells Spa!

Horita says she was approached by a burusera shop owner to appear in a stick flick.

"My friend starred in one. It was 50,000 yen if you masturbated, and double that for doing oral. I wasn't hungry enough for cash that I'd go that far. I only let my photo be used to sell my dirty knickers," she says.

By 1993, the burusera boom was on the way out. Police started arresting burusera store operators and sellers of the videos in which schoolgirls appeared. Over 100 schoolgirls were taken into protective custody. Action couldn't be taken under the Child Welfare Law as it was set up at the time, so offenders were arrested for breaking laws related to the sale of secondhand goods.

With the demise of the burusera, date clubs such as Pudding and Julianas Shinjuku which were frequented by yakuza and other seedy types popped up briefly and proved popular with schoolgirls descending further into the netherworld through the sale of their nether regions. But police soon launched a crackdown and the clubs were shuttered.

"Thinking back now, it was great fun to be able to use being a schoolgirl as a type of sellable brand name," one-time panty seller Horita tells Spa! "I didn't actually make much money out of selling my panties. I have no regrets, but I do think now that I was such a kid when I was doing that."

As the decade moved into its middle years, attitudes began to change. Guys who had once been content to shell out cash to buy schoolgirls' panties would start wanting to get into them.

(Today's story is the first of three about schoolgirl prostitution in Japan. The remaining stories will run on Thursday and Friday.)

April 2, 2003

WaiWai stories are transcriptions of articles that originally appeared in Japanese language publications. The Mainichi Daily News cannot be held responsible for the contents of the original articles, nor does it guarantee their accuracy. Views expressed in the WaiWai column are not necessarily those held by the Mainichi Daily News or Mainichi Newspapers Co.