One thing about Shibuya never changes. On any day of the week,
you'll see throngs of young people hanging around looking flamboyant
in anything from denim miniskirts to traditional yukata, their dyed
hair and loud colors seeming an extension of the ubiquitous big-screen
advertising that flashes and blares perpetually here in Tokyo's
premier youth haunt.
Miyu and a friend are sitting on a stairwell at Fashion Plaza 109,
the famous tower full of boutiques. Miyu extends her hand. "Got
any money?"
She is wearing an orange camisole and work pants. Her braided hair
is dyed blonde. She said at first she was a college student, but as we
talk, it emerges that she is 16, a first-year student at a Tokyo
private senior high school.
However much money she has, it's never enough. On her fingers she
ticks off her list of necessities: "Food, makeup, clubs, games,
meals." The 10,000 yen a month she gets from her parents doesn't
cover her expenses.
So three months ago, she started what she calls a part-time job:
enjo kosai, enko for short--sex or quasi-sex with generally
middle-aged men in return for cash handouts.
"Enko is everywhere," she says. "You just stand
there in your school uniform and men'll come up to you, asking for
enko."
If she accompanies a man to a restaurant or a karaoke box, she gets
5,000 yen to 10,000 yen an hour. If the man wants to take pictures,
she'll spend 10 minutes posing in a parking lot for 3,000 yen.
She has a friend, she says, who works at an unsavory establishment
where men pay to feel girls through their clothes. Four hours' work
nets her 20,000 yen. The girls consider it easy money--and since it's
not really sex, they say, it's not prostitution either.
Yuka (not her real name) is 17, a second-year senior high school
student. She carries a flashy bag and, during the summer vacation at
least, lives more or less homeless. She sleeps at friends' houses.
Yuka has a part-time job which she describes as
"selling." Selling what? Underwear and socks, which she
removes in front of the customer. Her junior high school uniform. Her
saliva.
Saliva?
"At first, I thought, `No way!'" she admits. "But
they pay real money for it."
Her parents don't seem to care that she's hardly ever home, but on
one point their discipline is firm. Her allowance is 5,000 yen a month
and not a penny more. What kind of fun can you have on 5,000 yen a
month?
That aside, she and her mother have little to say to each other.
Her mother, she says, is too busy playing the piano to take much of an
interest in what her daughter is up to.
Yuka says it would be scary to cross the line into actual
prostitution. But when she encounters a man on the Internet who
proposes meeting at a karaoke box or in a department store stairwell
so he can buy her panties, she sees no reason to refuse.
"It's money," she says simply. "It's not dangerous
for me, and it gives him pleasure. But if someone offers me 50,000 yen
to 60,000 yen for underwear and karaoke, I say no. That's dangerous.
You see how careful I am."
Last March, on an Internet chat site, a man said to her, "All
I want is five minutes of your time-I want to buy your saliva."
They arranged to meet at the Yamanote Line platform of Ikebukuro
Station. He would be wearing a black business suit, he said.
They recognized each other without difficulty, and everything went
as planned. The man produced a glass bottle; Yuka spit into it several
times; the man handed her 5,000 yen and vanished into the crowd.
The transaction, incidentally, is illegal. An amendment last year
to Tokyo's ordinance on the healthy development of youth bans traffic
in such personal items as underwear, saliva and urine when the seller
is a girl under 18.
Some seedy shops in Shibuya selling saliva and underwear offer an
added attraction: The girls will spit, or remove their panties, in
full view of the customer.
A price list on the counter of one reads: "B--8,000 yen.
S--11,000 yen. D--12,000 yen."
The shop is one of many commercial establishments crammed into one
building. B means bloomers. S stands for a Japanese word for urine. D,
also from the Japanese, means saliva.
The man at the counter gives me a thorough pat-down at the
entrance. He checks my pockets and shoes. "Some guys take
pictures with concealed cameras," he explains.
I clear the inspection and am led to a one-way mirror, behind which
I see six girls in a room, watching TV. They are talking loudly and
laughing.
I indicate my choice--a relatively quiet girl with black hair. She
is dressed in a school uniform consisting of a pink blouse with a
ribbon tie and a plaid skirt.
I am led into a small room, about the size of one tatami mat. A
moment later a door opens and the girl appears. She says hello and
sits down.
In her hands she holds a bottle about 5 centimeters tall. Into this
she spits and spits repeatedly, her cheeks swelling and deflating,
swelling and deflating. It takes her 10 minutes to fill the bottle.
Throughout, she is the very model of detached aloofness, her gaze
distant, her expression blank.
"Thank you," she says, politely but indifferently, as she
gets up to leave.
"Is she a high school student?" I ask the manager.
"No comment. In view of the law, you see," he replies.
Business is brisk, here and at similar establishments. The Internet
is the place to find them. Customers range in age from their 20s to
their 50s. Their occupation can be anything--banker, teacher, what
have you. One man, an interior decorator, came all the way from Kobe,
the manager tells me.
"We all have our secret pleasures," he says. "People
will pay any price for them. Thanks to the Internet, we get them
coming in from all over the country."
For girls looking for even bigger profits, there are ways to earn
them. One particularly profitable enterprise goes by the mangled
English name "delivery health." "Health" is a
euphemism for sex, and "delivery" means the girl goes to
your place. The trade is reportedly rife with underage girls--high
school students, junior high school students, runaways--working
illegally.
In a one-room apartment off Center-gai, Shibuya's main drag, a man
of 40 introduces himself as the general manager. His business is
delivery health.
"The girls ask me: `How much can I make a day? Thirty
thousand? Forty?'" Many of them are in senior high school. The
manager turns them away, he says--even though, he adds, "Most of
the customers say they prefer somebody young."
Enjo kosai prices have fallen lately. Even so, enko can be worth
30,000 yen to 50,000 yen for a girl willing to go all the way. In the
delivery health trade, that fee is expected.
Writer Misato Nakayama, 28, spent a year as a high school student
engaged in enko. She wrote a book about her experiences called
"16-sai datta" (I was 16).
Why did she do it? "It gratified me to think that someone was
willing to pay good money for me," she explains. "The reward
was tangible. There it was--money in your hand."
The scene has changed since her day, she says.
"I have the impression that girls today think nothing of
selling their bodies, their underwear, whatever. The erotic
entertainment industry is growing and growing--that too is an
influence. `Everyone else is doing it,' they say, `so I may as well do
it, too.'"
Tsuneo Akaeda is a gynecologist who offers free health
consultations at a table at the back of a hamburger restaurant in
Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district and also runs a clinic nearby.
He is the author of a book whose title says a good deal: "Sekkusu
ga Chikyu o Horobosu" (Sex is ruining the Earth).
"These kids have no idea that sex can be dangerous," he
says. "What are they--schoolgirls? Prostitutes? The boundaries
are disappearing."
The past seven or eight years have seen a particularly rapid
descent into unrestrained sexual behavior, Akaeda says. Abortion is on
the rise; chlamydia and gonorrhea are spreading.
"These girls have just had abortions, and there they are, cell
phones in hand, chattering and giggling. It's astonishing.
"They are so ignorant of the possible risks," he says.
On a Saturday evening in late July, I met an 18-year-old on Center-gai.
She had this to say about enjo kosai:
"If men didn't approach me, I'd quit. But they do approach me.
And so I do it." (IHT/Asahi: October 8,2005)
