Authorities Crack Down On School Girls For Child Prostitution

Ryann Connell
Japanese authorities finally appear to be taking steps to crack down on the widespread proliferation of child cheesecake, according to Weekly Playboy.

Just a few years ago, pictures of scantily clad high school girls would have created outrage, but it has now become common to see magazines, billboards and all sorts of other media plastered with images of G-string-clad girls in their pre-teens.

But a series of police raids late last year on producers of a photo shoot DVD starring a schoolgirl appear to have changed the situation.

"The girl's swimsuit was deliberately made to be see-through, it was so tight-fitting you could make out the shape of her genitalia and she'd been posed in such risqu? positions that the Metropolitan Police Department decided to arrest the maker for breaking the law banning child pornography even though the girl hadn't actually exposed her bust or between her legs," a reporter from a sports newspaper tells Weekly Playboy.

The arrest was the first time somebody had been picked up for breaking the Child Pornography Law without proliferating images featuring nudity. Eventually, though, the charge had to be downgraded to a violation of the Child Welfare Law, but the effect of the arrest reached far.

"Ever since the arrest, makers of products featuring teens in erotic poses have been in a state of panic. If material is judged to be overly obscene, people can be arrested for breaking the Child Pornography Law, even if the model is dressed in a swimsuit," says an employee of a medium-sized DVD manufacturer producing material featuring models under 15 years old. "DVD shops and wholesalers are now on their guard and have stopped taking materials featuring models under 15, even if the product looks like being a surefire seller."

Furi Nakamura, a journalist who specializes in covering the under-15 market, says there is a definite mood of self-restraint spreading among purveyors of photo collections and DVDs using child cheesecake.

"Situations are going to become crucial," the under-15 expert tells Weekly Playboy. "By that, I mean the situations where models are presented. Say, for example, a young model is decked out in an extremely skimpy bikini, the maker won't get in trouble if the photos are taken in an appropriate situation, like a pool or the beach. It's when you get the young models lying around on a bed, making provocative poses and stuff, that you're going to have the real problems -- even if they're wearing standard school-issue swimsuits, which aren't revealing at all. The key is going to be how natural producers will be able to make their images appear."

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Japanese Authorities To Clampdown On Matchmaking Sites

Operators of online matchmaking sites will soon be legally obligated to register with public safety authorities and immediately remove any posts that could incite juvenile crime.

National Police Agency officials are drafting changes to the law regulating matchmaking sites that will allow them to keep tighter control over the sites for lonely hearts that have often been used as fronts for such illegal activities as prostitution.

Crimefighters hope to have their proposed revisions put before the Diet by March.

NPA officials say the existing law regulating matchmaking sites contains no way for them to be able to determine who is actually running them and they are dependent on cooperation from providers and server operators to try and obtain that information. Cops say there are many cases where they are unable to pinpoint site operators operating illegally and that allows them to go unpunished.

The NPA wants to counter that by requiring all online matchmaking sites to register with prefectural public safety commissions or be punished for not doing so. The NPA will draw up a list of requirements operators will be expected to meet and ban members of organized crime gangs or those with criminal records from involvement in the business.

To combat juvenile crime, site operators will be required to remove any posts that may lead to illegal activity. Under the current law, deletions are left in the hands of operators, but the NPA wants to make it mandatory for site operators to immediately wipe out any posts making references to children.

And law enforcers also want some way to improve age verification methods. Currently, most sites only ask users whether they are over 18 and allow them access if they say they are, making it easy for minors to use the sites if they lie. Police are hoping to make matchmaking sites a member's only business accessible through payment by credit card - which can't be issued to under 18s - or some other form of identification, such as a driver's license.

Crime connected to online matchmaking sites has declined since the law regulating the business came into effect in 2003, but there was an increase of 92 people to 1,153 cases in 2006 which prompted police to feel the existing regulations still aren't sufficient.

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Love Hotels, Prime Targets Of Japanese Investors

Lust is a prime motivator for those who frequent Japan's love hotels, but the subject of that hankering has moved from physical intimacy to making money, according to Dacapo.

Love hotels have become prime targets for investors because they provide high returns with comparatively low risks.

Global Financial Support has apparently found its Leisure Hotel Fund called the Hope Series to be a winner for investors and the hotels alike.

"The fund in this series guarantees dividend payouts of at least 8.4 percent over a year," Global Financial's Daisuke Kondo tells Dacapo.
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Global Financial's love hotel funds have seen increasing numbers of investors who have been willing to put ever more money into plans to get the shag shacks up and running.

Love hotel funds run for three years. Once they finish, the hotel is usually sold off, though sometimes the funds are maintained and investors stay on with them.

Love hotels are a steady business, with experts saying they offer a lot for investors looking for somewhere to put their money with minimal risk of losing it because the business depends on human instinct and is less susceptible to hiccups in the economy.

"Putting it simply, love hotels have a stable source of revenue. There aren't many companies getting into the business for the first time and there are an extremely small number of competitors," Kondo tells Dacapo. "Even if a competitor does enter the market, it's usually in an area where there are already a large number of love hotels, so it has a complementary rather than competitive effect. If couples go to a love hotel and find it fully booked, they're highly likely to go to another love hotel nearby and use that."

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World's Oldest Person, Dies At 114

The world's oldest person, a Japanese woman who counted eating well and getting rest as her hobbies, has died Monday at age 114, a news report said.
Yone Minagawa, a widow who lived in a nursing home but was still sprightly late in life, died "of old age" Monday evening, Kyodo News reported.
There was no immediate answer to a telephone call placed to city hall in her town in southern Fukuoka prefecture.
Born on January 4, 1893, Ms Minagawa was already in her 50s when Japan surrendered in World War II.
She had been certified as the world's oldest person by the Guinness Book of World Records after Emma Faust Tillman, the daughter of freed American slaves, died in January.
Despite her advanced age, Ms Minagawa was said to enjoy eating sweets and counted eating well and getting a good night's sleep as the secrets of her longevity.
Her nursing home said Ms Minagawa had celebrated becoming the world's oldest person earlier this year with a Western-style lunch of bread, stew, salad and a dessert.
Japanese women are the world's oldest living people, in what experts attribute to a traditionally healthy diet and high standard of medical care.
Their life expectancy was a record 85.81 years in 2006, the government says.

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Report Reveals Japan Army Sex Slavery Racket

Forcing women to become sex slaves was a crime organized by the Japanese military during Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s, according to an investigative report published yesterday.

The first report by the Investigative Committee on Former Chinese "Comfort Women", co-founded by All China Lawyers' Association (ACLA) and China Legal Aid Foundation, traced 17 more survivors besides the ones who have already sued the Japanese government.

During its probe from September 2006 to March 2007, the committee found 14 of the 17 survivors were less than 18 when they were forced to become "comfort women", with the youngest being just 12.

Sixteen of the newly identified women were from North China's Shanxi Province and one from South China's Hainan Province, said the report posted on ACLA's website. The committee focused on five counties in Shanxi, two in Hainan and six in Yunnan.

Kang Jian, one of the lawyers behind the investigation, interviewed all the 17 survivors. "Now they are all in their 70s or 80s but they still suffer from serious mental and physical trauma," he said.

The Japanese army even tortured these "comfort women" by slashing them with knives or burning their faces with cigarettes.

"Many of them have no children and live in poverty. They told me their biggest wish was to get an apology and compensation from the Japanese government," Kang said.

But Tokyo has refused to pay direct compensation to any of the estimated 200,000 women, mostly Asian, saying all claims had been settled by subsequent peace treaties.

In April, Japan's top court rejected compensation claims of two Chinese women forced into the military brothels.

"Japanese courts have dismissed three Chinese 'comfort women's' lawsuits, while the fourth is going on," Kang said. "We carried out the investigations in a way that the documentation would help the court case."

The committee also released photographs of six Japanese officers' confessing about how they had "arrested" Chinese women and set up military brothels. Even a temple at Tengchong County in Yunnan Province was turned into a Japanese army brothel.

The "comfort women" practise lasted at least 16 years in China, the report said.

Su Zhiliang, director of the research center on "comfort women" in Shanghai Normal University, said more than 200,000 Chinese women were forced to become "comfort women" and over 75 percent of them were tortured to death.

"It's a shame that the Japanese government has rejected compensation pleas because the regulations and certificates show that the Japanese army and its government had forced women into prostitution," Su said. "In Hainan alone, there were 67 military brothels; there were more than 158 in Shanghai."

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