She thought she found love in a Japanese host club. Then the bills ballooned – and she was coerced into sex work

By Jessie Yeung, Hanako Montgomery and Junko Ogura, CNN

Tokyo (CNN) — Yu felt a rush of excitement as she walked into his bar for the first time – eager to meet the charming young host she’d been following for years online.

On that cold January night last year, they chatted over champagne – the first of many meetings that would have Yu fast falling in love.

Yu, 41, a clinician and divorced mother of two, soon began spending every spare minute with him at the bar in Tokyo’s main red-light district, dropping thousands of dollars on heavily marked-up alcohol.

In return, he showered Yu with attention and small gifts, celebrating her birthday with her and even promising to buy her a ring.

“He said, ‘You are my girlfriend,’” said Yu, who CNN is identifying by a pseudonym to protect her privacy. “I believed him.”

Yu says the host, handsome and in his 20s, encouraged her to run up a bar tab that quickly spiraled out of control.

Then, her money ran out – and everything changed.

With no way for Yu to pay the 25 million yen (about $165,000) she owed to the bar, he said he would take care of the debt. But now she would have to repay him – with sex work the only way to raise the cash.

Yu is one of hundreds of women coerced to sell their bodies after frequenting Japan’s so-called “host clubs,” experts told CNN.

There are more than 300 of these venues in Tokyo’s neon-lit Kabukicho district, offering male companionship to lonely women.

Though not all hosts exploit their female clients, authorities say some clubs are linked to organized crime, while activists say loose regulation of the industry has allowed abuse to fester.

Under current laws, anybody over the age of 18 can enter the clubs, and efforts by lawmakers to introduce stronger protections have so far failed.

Cases of extreme debt, exploitation and sex trafficking surged after Covid restrictions were lifted in 2023, activists say, with women flocking to host clubs following several years of business closures and isolation.

Last year, Tokyo police arrested 140 people for alleged prostitution in Kabukicho, according to public broadcaster NHK – a threefold increase from the previous year. Of those detained, 40% told police they were soliciting to repay debts run up at host clubs, NHK reported.

With such cases mounting, authorities set up helplines for victims and arrested hosts for allegedly coercing indebted customers into sex work.

In December, Tokyo police inspected 176 host clubs in Kabukicho, NHK reported – finding regulatory violations in 75% of the venues, mainly for not clearly displaying the price of alcohol and for placing menus out of sight.

“It’s a romance scam, basically,” said Ayaka Shiomura, a member of Japan’s upper house of parliament, who has unsuccessfully pushed for better safeguards against exploitative host clubs.

“Some of these women are brainwashed into thinking they’re dating these hosts. It’s a vicious, bad cycle.”

The price of love

For many victims, that cycle begins online, especially on social media – where hosts built their fanbase when pandemic restrictions forced their clubs to close.

Mikami Rui, 28, has worked as a host for the past 10 years – and says for much of his career, the clubs weren’t very well known. But “awareness is spreading in Japan” because of platforms like Instagram, TikTok and X, where hosts are “working very hard to become more visible,” he said.

While he insists he has never forced a customer into sex work, he admits to previously persuading women to spend far beyond their means.

Now, he claims, “I entertain women without pressuring them for money … I stick to what they can afford.”

On these apps, hosts identify and flirt with prospective customers to entice them to visit the clubs, said Hidemori Gen, an advocate in Tokyo who provides a drop-in consultation service for victims of sexual abuse and gang violence.

Often, hosts target vulnerable young women, draining them of their savings and then coercing them into sex work to repay their bar debts, Gen said.

Yu had watched the host’s YouTube videos for two years before going to his club – that first meeting laying the groundwork for a one-sided relationship of false promises.

After that night, he reached out asking to see her again – so Yu visited the club once more. Soon, he was treating her at restaurants and hookah bars, paying her special attention “over other girls,” she said. He talked about going to the places she wanted to visit, like Disneyland or Japan’s popular island destination Okinawa.

This kind of special attention is why victims – some as young as 18 – often genuinely believe the hosts are their boyfriends, said Shiomura, the national assembly member.

Hosts may have sex with their customers “early on” to establish intimacy, saying things like “I love you” and “let’s get married” – some even going as far as meeting the women’s parents, she said.

The whole time, Yu was racking up bills she couldn’t pay.

Host clubs often offer steep discounts for new customers, luring them in with cheap drinks then jacking up the prices once they’re hooked – with some bottles of alcohol costing as much as $6,000.

Many hosts also encourage clients to keep their bar tab open for weeks at a time – which is how debts can balloon out of sight.

“He asked me, ‘How are you going to pay me back?’ and when I said I didn’t know, he said, ‘Go abroad for sex work,’” Yu said.

“I didn’t want to. But he said it was the only way and that I could make 8 million yen (about $53,000) a month.”

Desperate and depleted of her savings, Yu began working as a prostitute in Japan and the Chinese territories of Macao and Hong Kong. It didn’t feel like she had a choice, she said.

“We worked 10-hour-plus shifts. Every hour, there was a show and I would get picked, then bought. It made me really sad to see about 100 girls, including myself, be bought,” she said.

“When my body was exhausted or I felt weak, I thought it’d be easier to die. I thought about that a lot.”

Overcome with shame and anger at herself, she didn’t tell friends or family about her predicament.

Shiomura, the lawmaker, said even when being exploited, many women still view the hosts as their boyfriends and want to support them.

“I think it tells you how this mind control runs deep,” she said.

No regulations, no relief

Gen, who runs the consultation service for abuse victims, says he has seen a fivefold increase of cases like Yu’s in the past year alone.

“Last spring, when we came out of the pandemic and the masks came off, that’s when consultations about host clubs increased dramatically,” he said.

And laws lag the surge in cases, allowing exploitative host clubs to continue their shady practices.

Shiomura last year proposed a bill in parliament that called for government investigations, public awareness campaigns, counseling services and employment assistance for victims. Rejected by the ruling party, the bill failed to pass, with some critics arguing female customers bear responsibility for visiting host clubs and spending irresponsibly.

That means it’s largely up to hosts and host clubs to self-regulate – which some have promised to do. Since April, more than a dozen host club operators in Tokyo – each owning several venues – said they would refuse entry to women under the legal drinking age of 20 and prevent customers from running up massive debts.

Rui, the host, welcomed the measure, saying clubs that break the guidelines should be shut down.

But there are far more clubs beyond those owned by the 13 operators that have pledged to follow the new self-imposed rules – and no such commitment on a national level. Even within Tokyo, Shiomura voiced doubts about whether clubs would honor their promises, and said she would resubmit the rejected bill if the problem continued.

“A lot of people say that it is the woman’s self-responsibility. But I wouldn’t dare think that,” she said. “I think there’s a problem with Japanese society that looks at the bodies of such young women, young women in their teens and 20s, as products.”

And there is little relief for victims whose lives have already been upended.

Yu is no longer seeing the host, who she says released her from her debt after she’d paid back most of it. But with bills to cover and heavy credit card debt, she still feels trapped.

“I’m still doing sex work because I can’t afford to leave. I don’t want to do this work. I feel like I’m going to fall apart,” Yu said.

“I’ve hit rock bottom. I don’t know if I can start over again.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Moeri Karasawa contributed to this report.