In possibly related incident, Tokyo Metropolitan Police received complaint from foreigner that “I paid the woman the money, but didn’t get to have sex.”

On Thursday, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department announced that they have arrested a group of four women on charges of prostitution in the city’s Kabukicho bar district. As there’s been a troubling increase in brazen street prostitution in this part of the city in recent years, with a corresponding increase in attention from law enforcement, the arrests themselves aren’t so shocking, but the women’s methodology, and certain complaints the police have been receiving, are pretty startling.

One of the four women, all of whom have admitted to the prostitution charges against them, has been identified as a sort of de-facto leader of the group, organizing a network with more than two dozen members who would share text messages and photos alerting each other to police patrols in the area. This wasn’t their only strategy for avoiding arrest, however, as during questioning one of the woman told investigators:

“If we were [having sex with] foreigners, we figured there was no way they’d be undercover police officers and so we wouldn’t get caught.”

The details of exactly how the group, who used phone translation apps to negotiate terms with foreign customers, were identified by police as prostitutes hasn’t been made public. The woman’s past-tense framing that they “thought” they’d be able to weed out plainclothes cops by focusing on foreigners makes one wonder if that eventually turned out to be not as safe a ploy as they’d expected. While foreign nationals cannot become police officers in Japan, there’s no ethnicity requirement, meaning that non-ethnically Japanese citizens of Japan, including nationalized citizens who immigrated to the country and thus may still look like “foreigners,” could theoretically be employed for sting operations against individuals offering illegal services to foreign tourists.

On the other hand, it’s possible that the woman’s use of “thought” is just a reflection that, with the quartet under arrest for prostitution, they’re not currently plying their trade, putting all their related methods in the past. The group didn’t completely ignore potential Japanese clients either, though in such cases they targeted older men, again under the logic that they were less likely to be undercover police officers.

▼ Probably not a cop.

As such, it’s hard to say whether or not there was non-ethnically Japanese personnel working on the side of the law making the arrests. However, the police do know that there have been instances of foreigners attempting to purchase the services of prostitutes in Tokyo, and by their own admission. Between October of 2024 and June of 2025, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police say that they have received 11 reports from foreigners with complaints such as “I paid [a woman] the money, but was unable to have sex with her,” or “A woman stole my money at a hotel.” Investigators are currently looking into whether the four women were involved in any of those instances, though in the context of seeing if they were involved in additional cases of illegal prostitution, not for charges of fraudulent failure to render services.

This is a good time to take a moment and remember that while Japan has a wide variety of legal hostess bars, house-call erotic massage companies, and other entertainment services specializing in sexual titillation, prostitution, in the sense of exchanging money for sexual intercourse, is against the law. Somewhat confusingly, Japan’s Anti-Prostitution Law only has specified penalties for those selling sex, and no codified punishment for those purchasing it, but both parties involved in the transaction are technically breaking the law. With prostitution concerns on the rise throughout Japanese society, and the recent arrests bringing a new wave of attention to undesirable conduct by foreign tourists, it wouldn’t be surprising if police forces stop letting johns off the hook and start putting the cuffs on them too, since even if their case never makes it to trial because there’s no punishment to render, the Japanese legal system can still make getting arrested very unpleasant.

Source: Tokyo Shimbun, NHK News Web, Bengoshi JP News
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso
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