Debt-laden Japanese woman lured to Hong Kong for prostitution recalls ordeal
The woman who worked for one month in the "Pin-pon Mansion" in Hong Kong is pictured in Tokyo on Jan. 30, 2024. She says she went there to pay off debt she had incurred at a host club in Japan. (Mainichi/Shohei Kato)
TOKYO -- In the corridor of an old apartment building in Hong Kong known as the Pin-pon Mansion are rows of doors. Behind one of them, a woman in her 30s from Tokyo sold her body for around one month. The woman had been encouraged to go into prostitution overseas by a scout she knew who had previously introduced her to adult entertainment businesses.
The woman was apparently one of many who had come to Hong Kong to work. "There were a lot of other women around me, doing the same thing, making money overseas," she recalled.
She had begun working at sex businesses around her early 20s, to earn money to go to "host clubs" where male companions known as hosts entertain women. To fund this pastime in Tokyo's Kabukicho district, she worked at adult entertainment establishments across Japan, from the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido to the southern island prefecture of Okinawa. When she looked for new places to work, she always went through the same scout. They had agreed that he would step in if there was any trouble with her clients or with the sex business regarding her wages, and she accordingly paid him 10% of her earnings.
Around the fall of 2022, the scout approached her and asked her, "Are you interested in going overseas?" At the time, the woman had racked up a huge bill at a host club. After ordering expensive champagne towers at the prompting of a host she had selected to talk and drink with her, the tab had ballooned to about 9 million yen (roughly $60,000).
At one stage, the woman had been living with this host, and she also introduced him to the scout. After connecting with the host, the scout began collecting the money she owed on the host's behalf, and strictly demanded payment from her.
Messages sent to the woman's smartphone from a person believed to be a local broker when she arrived in Hong Kong are seen in this partially modified image provided by the woman. She was guided to the meeting point with a photo.
The woman wasn't good with foreign languages, and was hesitant to travel abroad, but when the issue of her unpaid tab was brought up she had no option but to accept. After it was decided that she would travel to Hong Kong, the scout handed her a smartphone with a highly confidential communication app installed. She was instructed to use it to keep in touch with the scout during her stay there.
The scout took care of her plane ticket and travel procedures, but she was alone when she boarded the plane at Tokyo's Haneda Airport. As soon as she arrived in Hong Kong, she got a message on her phone from someone who seemed to be a local broker saying, "When you arrive, please come here," plus a photo of the meeting point in the terminal. She headed straight there, where a Chinese-speaking man was waiting.
The woman conversed with the man using a translation app, and she got into a car he drove. After about 30 minutes, they arrived at the "Pin-pon Mansion."
The woman was guided into a room with a bed, a small fridge, a chest of drawers, a shower and a toilet. The scout had told her in advance that she would live there and entertain visiting clients. The name of the apartment came from the system where clients would ring the doorbell at the entrance with a "pin-pon" (ding-dong) and call the woman inside to the door.
In other rooms on the same floor, women from various regions such as mainland China and the Philippines waited for clients. The Tokyo woman worked approximately 12-hour shifts starting from the early afternoon. The money she received from clients was split fifty-fifty with the Chinese-speaking man in charge of managing the business at the apartment.
A street lined with host clubs is seen in the Kabukicho district of Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward in July 2023. (Mainichi/Shota Harumashi)
On some days the woman had several clients, but on others there were none at all. She earned about 500,000 yen (approx. $3,320) over a period of one month. Many of the clients were local men, but there were some customers who spoke Japanese. She sent all the money she received, excluding what she needed for food and other expenses, to the scout.
"I somehow managed to communicate with clients and the girls in the other rooms using a translation app, but it was an unfamiliar place and I felt helpless and lonely," she said. She worked for the instructed period and returned home "a wreck," both mentally and physically. She then cut ties with the scout who arranged her travel. She did not contact police.
Among her acquaintances were women who had traveled to Australia and the United States to engage in prostitution. All of them had incurred heavy debts at host clubs.
The woman still frequents the clubs, even though she thinks she "can't continue living with things dragging on like this." She says a scout whom she has recently met is asking her if she would like to go to Australia.
(Japanese original by Shohei Kato, Tokyo City News Department)
