YOUNG UNDER AGE IN KABUKICHO
Drugs, prostitution, and more: Police crackdown on Toyoko kids delinquency in Kabukicho continues
July 17, 2024 by Tadashi AnahorIFrom Tokyo Kinky Sex
The police crackdown continues on the phenomenon known as Toyoko kids, referring to the young delinquents gathering in the main plaza in Kabukicho at night.
Delinquency in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho is absolutely nothing new but the current issue was sparked, in part, by the pandemic and is spatially different now, with young people gathering in one main location and the optics at nighttime contrasting with the “clean” Kabukicho.
The crackdown is linked to the attempts to gentrify Kabukicho and turn it into a tourist-friendly destination, even at night, which is ongoing for several years, and the more recent moral panic about prostitution in nearby Okubo Park by young women, often to pay off their debts to host clubs in Kabukicho.
Over the recent three-day weekend, police did a sweep of the Toyoko kids in Kabukicho, admonishing 21 young men and women aged between 14 and 17.
Officers checked for overdoses and if the teenagers were being involved in criminal acts by “malicious” adults.
As dutifully reported in the mainstream media, police announced that they admonished nine people for “late-night loitering” and a further eight for smoking. A 15-year-old high schooler had 20 sleeping pills, allegedly in order to overdose, and a 16-year-old high schooler was caught trying to enter a love hotel with a male customer who she picked up in Okubo Park.
Instances of police catching minors with drugs in Kabukicho has increased by three times.
On Friday night, police arrested a 44-year-old man for possession of dried cannabis on a rooftop of Kabukicho. He is alleged to have made female junior high school Toyoko kids smoke cannabis. The rooftop where he was arrested is another place where underaged kids gather.
Also in the news, six Kabukicho hosts and scouts have been arrested for introducing a 19-year-old female customers to sex work. Kabukicho’s hosts are essentially serving as go-betweens between vulnerable, indebted women and brothels or other sex services.
In another incident reported about a week ago, three men were arrested for separately soliciting sex from an 11-year-old elementary school student in April in Kabukicho. The student had run away from home. She was paid ¥5,000 by one of the men for sex in a nearby love hotel, after which she met the other two men in the area. The first man, who is in his forties, told police that he had been coming to Kabukicho for a year for “dates.”
