Tokyo
CNN
—
The first time Yu walked into his bar, she was filled with excitement, eager to meet the attractive young host she had been following online for years.
They chatted over champagne on a cold January night last year, and it was the first of many encounters that would lead to Yuu quickly falling in love.
Yu, 41, a clinician, divorced mother of two, was soon spending her free time with him at bars in Tokyo’s main entertainment district, spending thousands of dollars on heavily inflated alcohol prices.
In return, he showered Yu with attention and small gifts, celebrated her birthday with her, and even promised to buy her a ring.
“He said, ‘You’re my girlfriend,'” said Yu, who CNN is using a pseudonym for privacy reasons. “I believed him.”
Yu said her handsome host, in his 20s, encouraged her to increase her bar bill and it quickly got out of control.
Then her money ran out and everything changed.
Daniel Campisi/CNN
A silhouette of Yuu when she first met her host in January 2023. More than a year later, she is still in debt and has turned to sex work to make ends meet.
Yu had no way of paying back the 25 million yen (about $165,000) debt she owed the bar, so he offered to pay her off. But now she has to pay him back, and her only way to raise the cash is through sex.
Experts told CNN that Yu is one of hundreds of women in Japan who have been forced to sell their bodies after attending so-called “host clubs.”
Tokyo’s neon-lit Kabukicho district is home to more than 300 such establishments, offering male companionship to lonely women.
Not all hosts exploit female clients, but authorities say some clubs have ties to organized crime and activists say the industry is loosely regulated, allowing abuse to flourish.
Under current law, anyone over the age of 18 can enter a club, and efforts by lawmakers to impose stronger protections have so far failed.
Activists say cases of massive debt, exploitation and sex trafficking have soared since anti-COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in 2023, with women flocking to host clubs after years of business closures and isolation.
Behruz Meheri/AFP/Getty Images
A male host drinks champagne with a customer at a host club in Kabukicho, Tokyo, in January 2017.
Last year, Tokyo police arrested 140 people on suspicion of prostitution in Kabukicho, three times the number from the previous year. Of those arrested, 40 percent told police they were soliciting customers to repay debts they owed to host clubs, NHK reported.
As such cases increased, authorities set up hotlines for victims and arrested hosts on suspicion of forcing debt-ridden clients into sex work.
According to a NHK report, when the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department inspected 176 host clubs in Kabukicho in December, they found that 75 percent of the establishments were violating regulations, such as not posting alcohol prices or placing menus in out of sight.
“It’s basically a romance scam,” said Shiomura Fumika, a member of Japan’s upper house who has unsuccessfully sought better safeguards against exploitative host clubs.
“Some women are brainwashed into thinking they are dating the host. It’s a vicious cycle.”
For many victims, the cycle begins online, especially on social media, where hosts built fanbases when clubs were forced to close due to pandemic restrictions.
Mikami Rui, 28, has worked as a host for the past decade and says that for most of her career, clubs were relatively unknown, but thanks to platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and X, “awareness in Japan is spreading” and hosts are “trying hard to become more visible”, she says.
He maintains he never forced clients to have sex, but acknowledges persuading women to spend far more than they made money on.
Now he claims, “I entertain women without asking for money… I stick to what they can pay.”
Daniel Campisi/CNN
Rui Mikami was hired as a host at the age of 18 and has been working as a host for 10 years.
On these apps, hosts identify potential clients and lure them into coming to their clubs, said Gen Hidemori, a Tokyo-based advocate who runs a drop-in counseling service for victims of sexual abuse and gang violence.
Hosts often target vulnerable young women, draining their savings and forcing them into sex work to pay off the bar’s debts, Geng said.
Yu had been watching the host’s YouTube videos for two years before going to the club, and that first encounter laid the foundation for a one-sided relationship based on false promises.
After that night, he said he wanted to see her again, so Yu visited the club again. Soon he was treating her to restaurants and hookah bars, and giving her special attention “more than other girls,” she said. He talked about going to places she wanted to go, including Disneyland and Okinawa, a popular Japanese tourist destination.
Shiomura, the Diet member, said it was these special considerations that led victims – some as young as 18 – to genuinely believe that their hosts were their boyfriends.
Daniel Campisi/CNN
Gen Hidemori, a Tokyo lawyer, runs a drop-in counselling service for victims of sexual abuse and gang violence.
To establish intimacy, hosts will sometimes have sex with customers “early on,” saying things like “I love you” and “let’s marry you,” and some even go so far as to meet the women’s parents, she said.
All the while, Yu was racking up bills he couldn’t pay.
Host clubs often offer steep discounts to new customers, luring them in with cheap drinks and then jacking up the prices once they get hooked, with some bottles of alcohol costing as much as $6,000.
Many hosts encourage their customers to leave their bar bills open for weeks, thus allowing the debt to grow.
The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images
On November 5, 2007, a billboard advertising a host club lit up in Tokyo’s Kabukicho entertainment district.
“He asked me, ‘How are you going to pay me back?’ I said I didn’t know and he told me to go overseas and do sex work,” Yu said.
“I didn’t want to do it, but they told me it was the only way and that I could earn 8 million yen (about $53,000) a month.”
Desperate and with her savings depleted, Yu began working as a prostitute in Japan and the Chinese territories of Macau and Hong Kong – she said she didn’t see any other options.
“We worked shifts of more than 10 hours. There was a show every hour and I was chosen and bought. It was really sad to see about 100 girls, including me, being bought,” she said.
“When I felt tired and weak, I thought it would be easier to die. I thought about that a lot.”
She was so consumed with shame and anger at herself that she didn’t tell her friends or family about her plight.
Shiomura said that even when they were being exploited, many women saw their hosts as lovers and wanted to support them.
“I think this shows how deep-rooted mind control is,” she said.
Geng, who runs a counselling service for abuse victims, says she has seen a five-fold increase in cases like Yu’s in the past year alone.
“Last spring, when the pandemic subsided and masks were no longer required, we saw a dramatic increase in inquiries about host clubs,” he said.
And the law has not kept up with the surge in cases, allowing exploitative host clubs to continue their fraudulent practices.
Shiomura introduced a bill to parliament last year calling for a government investigation, public awareness campaigns, counselling services and employment assistance for victims. The bill was rejected by the ruling party and failed to pass, and critics say female clients who visit host clubs and spend money irresponsibly also bear the blame.
Daniel Campisi/CNN
Shiomura Fumika is a member of the Japanese House of Councillors and has campaigned for legislation to regulate exploitative host clubs and provide support to victims.
That means self-regulation depends heavily on the hosts and host clubs themselves, and some host clubs have promised to self-regulate. Since April, more than a dozen host club operators with multiple locations in Tokyo have announced that they will refuse entry to women under the legal drinking age of 20 to prevent customers from getting into large debts.
Presenter Louis welcomed the move and said clubs breaching the guidelines should be closed.
But far more clubs outside the 13 operators have pledged to follow the new self-regulations, and there are no such commitments at the national level. Even in Tokyo, Governor Shiomura expressed doubts that clubs would keep their promises, and said she would resubmit the scrapped bill if problems continued.
“Many people say it’s the women’s own fault, but I don’t think that’s the case at all,” she says. “I think the problem lies with Japanese society, which sees the bodies of young women in their teens and twenties as commodities.”
And there is little relief for victims whose lives have already been turned upside down.
After paying off most of her debt, Yu no longer sees the host who got her out of debt, but with bills to pay and huge credit card debt, she still feels trapped.
“I’m still doing sex work because I can’t afford to quit. I don’t want to do this job. I feel like I’m going to fall apart,” Yu said.
“I hit rock bottom. I don’t know if I can do it again.”
