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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”]

http://mytown.asahi.com/nagasaki/news.php?k_id=43000200709140001


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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