A ‘culture of dates’ in Japan targets vulnerable high school girls
‘High school dating’ matches schoolgirls with men in their 40s and 50s
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Anna Fifield.
High school dating isn’t a big deal in many parts of the world — but in Japan, it means something quite different.
The practice of “high school dating” matches young girls with men much older than them. And it means money changing hands.
Sometimes this involves a walk around the block or a drink in a bar. More often, it involves sex — child prostitution by another name.
“We actually find regular bars uninteresting these days,” said one man in his 30s who was sitting at a wooden school desk in AKB High School, a cafe in Akihabara, a part of Tokyo known for its subcultures. “I got tired of regular bars with old women.”
They admitted that the uniforms are a big part of the attraction. “They look so cute,” said his friend, in his 40s. “The uniforms make them look one and a half times cuter than they actually are.”
This is Japan’s shady “JK” or “high school dating” business. (“Joshi kosei” means “high school girl” in Japanese, and the English initials JK are used to describe the practice.)
Although some cafes like this are relatively innocent — those that employ high school girls must close by 10 p.m., — there is a large part of this world that is not.
There are various levels of high school dating, starting with cafes staffed by underage girls and peep shows where high school girls sit behind a one-way mirror in their school uniforms, posing according to customers’ requests.
One business offers peep shows where girls between 15 and 17 years old sit in their school uniforms folding paper cranes, their legs arranged so their underwear was visible. Men pay $60 to watch a girl of their choosing for 30 minutes.
There is also “tour guiding,” when girls go for a walk with men, a walk that often ends with some kind of sexual service, and the straightforward “compensated dating” — being paid for sex.
“Japan is a patriarchal society, and it has this mentality that the young and seemingly innocent are valuable and more alluring,” said Kazue Muta, a professor of sociology and gender studies at Osaka University.
In its most recent report on international human rights practices, the State Department noted concerns about the sexual exploitation of children in Japan, saying that “compensated dating” in particular facilitates the sex trafficking of children.
Some efforts have been made in recent years to curtail the business, but they have amounted to little — partly because so few people consider it a problem.
“There are girls in difficult situations — they could be coming from a poor family or could be sexually abused at home — and find it hard to live their lives,” said Jun Tachibana of nonprofit Bond Project, which is trying to get girls off the streets and stop them from falling into the JK business.
Mio, a 17-year-old in her second year of high school in Tokyo, started in this business last year, having sex with a man in a karaoke room for $30.
“I feel accepted and needed, and I don’t have these feelings otherwise,” Mio said. She described a home life where her parents hate each other and she hates them.
Advocates for girls say this practice is nothing short of child prostitution.
Many ordinary Japanese consider the practice deviant, yet place the blame on the girls, said Muta. High school girls who become pregnant are regularly expelled from school.
“Many people see it as a problem with the girls, not with the men,” she added.
As such, when authorities discuss ways to curb the practice, they tend to come up with ideas such as imposing curfews on girls, rather than penalizing men for having sex with high schoolers, Muta said.
“They often don’t receive the necessary help because they are just considered prostitutes or girls who are behaving badly,” said Yumeno Nito, who runs Colabo, a support group that helps exploited girls. “Unless this changes, girls will continue being lured into the JK business.”
