WUNRN
Deriheru
- Delivery health
(デリバリーヘルス Deribarii herusu?), also known as shutchō health
(出張ヘルス) or by the abbreviation
"deriheru" (デリヘル), is a form of prostitution
in Japan similar
to fashion
health, the difference being that the brothel has no
premises and is essentially a call girl or escort
service with women being dispatched to their customers' homes or to
hotels.Outcall call girl businesses distribute advertising handouts to home and
apartment mailboxes, telephone booths, restrooms and the like in big cities in
Japan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivery_health
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14
September 2007
Ongoing problems: The Increase in Escort Prostitution [“Deriheru”]
By Ogawa Yusuke and Hata Akira
[Translation: Caroline Norma cps@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au]
Murder, robbery, blackmail
There is no end to the problems involving the escort prostitution venues known
as ‘daily health’ (deriheru) in Japan. While brothels are
prohibited in the prefecture [Nagasaki], escort prostitution is booming. Police
complain that the nature of escort services means they are difficult to track,
and the problems surrounding them are endless.
Recruited in the name of ‘high income, short hours’
Recruited by a friend
I started here after being recruited by a friend saying that ‘We’re short of
staff, so won’t you come along?’. I suppose I can’t think of any other casual
work to do at the moment.
This 20-year-old female university student from Nagasaki City has been working
in escort prostitution for a year. She left home to attend university, and
worked casually at restaurants and convenience stores in Nagasaki City when she
first came here for university. Her hourly pay in these jobs was less than $10.
She gets thousands of dollars a month in her current job.
She is dispatched to the buyer’s hotel room or house, and at first she was
hesitant about having physical contact with men she didn’t know. But this
gradually wore away.
On the days that I’m working, I just go out with friends as normal. Then the
escort agency rings me on my mobile when they get an escort request, and I take
it. Half of the money I get I give to the agency.
From last year, there have been women murdered in escort prostitution within
the prefecture, and there have been a series of women being robbed. ‘I think
about the fact that those women could have been me. But I just can’t imagine
going back to a low paying casual job now’.
On days when there aren’t many calls to the escort service, the woman goes out
with other women from the agency to ‘recruit’ women to work. She goes to big
shopping malls and train stations where young women gather and tells them that
they can earn big money.
‘They’re in need of money, and they don’t feel so suspicious if they’re
approached by women who are around the same age as them’.
On the other hand, the escort business owners are trying to think of ways to reduce
the number of incidents with customers. ‘If we’re noticed by police, it has a
bad effect on business. Even if we have an incident with a customer, we can’t
report it straight away’.
Police can’t track the escort services
Hotbeds of crime
According to prefectural police, there were 98 escort prostitution services in
the prefecture (Nagasaki, Sasebo, and Isahaya) as at the end of July 2007. This
is 10 more than the same time last year.
The Japanese adult entertainment industry regulations were amended in May last
year, and new regulations allowing police to enter suspected escort
prostitution venues were introduced. Even in Nagasaki prefecture, this led to a
sudden sharp decline in the venues, but they’ve started to increase again now
in 2007.
In June this year, Nagasaki police inspected more than 20 escort prostitution
venues. This was the second time since the murder of a woman in escort
prostitution in the east of Nagasaki City last November. Police ordered
‘improvement’ orders to venues that violated adult entertainment industry
regulations, such a not keeping proper records of staff.
One police officer reported that he felt it was a waste of time: ‘No matter how
much we inspect the venues and make improvement orders, escort prostitution
involves being dispatched to a private room with one other person. There’s no
way that we can gauge how the businesses are being operated, it’s inevitable
that they are hotbeds of crime’.
The decline of adult entertainment districts: a major source of funds
Involvement of organised crime
Prefectural police have difficulty policing the ‘underside’ of the industry
that they can’t get to. Police believe that prostitution business operators
using online introduction sites are working within the prefecture, but they’re
unable to do anything about them.
On the 1 August, prefectural police arrested one of the heads of the Yamaguchi
yakuza for suspected violation of organised crime laws after he was caught
running a very profitable escort prostitution business.
According to police, since at least 2004, the man had been using an
introductions website to mediate prostitution. The profits of the business were
used in yakuza activities. He employed around 5 women, one of whom was an
unemployed 16-year-old girl. His daily earnings were as much as $2000.
Brothels are banned in the prefecture, but escort services fall outside of the
regulations. Prefectural police believe that organised crime is involved in
most of the prostitution venues in the prefecture.
Police have received information to the effect that, if entrepreneurs without
links to the yakuza try to enter the industry, yakuza members will take their
women from them and conduct other activities to prevent them operating.
An investigating police office said that ‘with the decline in adult
entertainment districts, organised crime has lost a source of income. There is
no doubt that escort prostitution services have become a very important source
of funds for the yakuza’.
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