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Police in Tokyo have arrested two men on suspicion of extortion for forcing a 36-year-old woman into prostitution to pay back debts.
The two suspects were identified as Masatoshi Okamoto, 38, an office worker from Saitama Prefecture’s Koshigaya City, and Sho Onodera, 36, a member of an affiliated Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate from Saitama’s Soka City, Sankei Shimbun reported. Police said Okamoto has denied the allegations, while Onodera has remained silent.
The two are accused of meeting the woman on an online dating site and forcing her into prostitution after claiming she had “debts of 13.5 million yen” and demanded cash from her. Over the course of one year from June 2016, the victim was forced to pay the men 8.4 million yen.
Police said Okamoto allegedly threatened to expose the woman if she didn’t pay up. The incident came to light after the victim consulted with police.
© Japan Today
14 Comments
timeon
I don't really understand, did she have debts or not? And expose what, the fact that she has debts?
rgcivilian1
This is article is leaving way to many details to make sense.
JJ Jetplane
I thought this was the normal accepted practice to get women into prostitution in Japan.
WilliB
The article is vague. Just "claiming she debts" does not make sense at all. They must have had something on her.
Ah_so
We don't have the full story here, but we can work on the assumption that this was an attempt at extortion and blackmail and probably some kind of entrapment.
Maybe leave off the victim blaming for now?
Flute
@ Vincent Black, where do you get the idea that she choose to prostitute or that she made the debt ?
That is quite clear : they forced her to prostitute and claimed she had a debt. It is written nowhere that she made a debt neither that she choose to prostitute to pay it off.
We are dealing with yakuza there, so one can expect an online dating version of "you bumped into me, you broke my arm, you have to pay compensation money.", with menace of going to workplace, house, friends, ... until he gets his money.
Or perhaps you have other source ?
Vince Black
How was she "forced" into prostitution? She couldn't have just called the police? At her age she should know better than to get involved with these types, and also choose not to engage in prostitution.
kurisupisu
Plenty of ladies in Japan selling themselves....
Marshall Saints
Asking pertinent questions is now "victim blaming"??
Why should I trust anything the article says? Why do you?
If she owed a debt she owed a debt. That said, I doubt the debt was being calculated fairly.
If she was forced to do anything she was forced to pay back the debt she owed, which we pretty much all are when we run up a debt. Its a simple rule of life. Seems far more likely they offered her the job to pay the debt she had to pay rather than "forced her to prostitute". I doubt they said they would only accept funds gleaned through prostitution.
Its also quite likely this person is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But you know what? I am not here to compliment a person just for a being a female. Seems like she made as many stupid choices as the guys made evil ones...its about the only way I can fill in the blanks.
Marshall Saints
Which is why they print subtle lies, bias and lies of omission. Missing information is why we are asking questions. Given not only nuance, but also the nasty tendency of some people to assume nuance that isn't there, it seems that for you at least, there is no safe way to ask an innocent question.
Yes. A rare thing these days.
A statement that flies in the face of the mountain of times papers were caught lying. Lies sell print. People love to believe crazy things and many publications are happy to provide. Also fanning the flames of controversy sells print and that too can be done with lies.
And it was you that threw the word "lie" into this. The word I used was "trust". And the opposite of trust is not just lies from the publisher but also mistakes, whether incorrect information, or mistakenly printing lies told by another as fact. The police often tell lies to the press and give out misleading information to the press you know. And as I mentioned, omissions, some intentional and some maybe not.
Basically my position, from the information given and blanks I was forced to fill in myself, is that it most likely took two to tango here. Your position seems to be to support the woman no matter what. I will concede that neither of us have enough facts to truly know anything, but the major difference is, as I see it, that I am taking it case by case and you are the type who will always absolve the woman in any case.
Tom
JukuJo gets scammed.
Vince Black
How is it victim blaming if the so called "victim" chose to do it.
She had debts that were likely her own fault. Then she chose to prostitute herself to pay them off. Now she's crying wolf. Makes no sense
girl_in_tokyo
Some questions are nothing more than an attempt to poison the well. For example, the question "When did you stop beating your wife" automatically assumes the person did, in fact, beat their wife.
Asking "what debt did she have" or "how can someone be forced in prostitution" is the exact same type of question. It purposely throws doubt onto the victim and makes it seem as if the victim is at fault. Thus, victim-blaming.
Why should we trust newspapers?
1) Newspapers would be sued and go out of business entirely if they printed blatant lies.
2) There is such a thing as journalistic integrity.
3) The newspaper has nothing to gain by lying.
4) There is no evidence here to suggest that the newspaper is lying.
The article says they convinced her she had a debt, not that she actually had a debt. As for your suggestion that she had a debt and that it was being calculated unfairly, you have zero evidence for that. It's nothing but a supposition.
I find it very strange that you are unwilling to believe what a newspaper is reporting as fact, yet fine with making up your own ideas and putting faith in them even though you have zero evidence for them.
There are numerous cases where women have been forced into prostitution by means of coersion and threats of violence. This is not even an uncommon occurrence. It happens all the time, around the world. There is absolutely no good or logical reason for you to try and throw doubt onto this, so this makes me suspect you have personal reasons for doing so.
Yet again, you dismiss the facts of the case as set out in the article, and instead are making random, unsubstantiated and illogical suppositions. This indicates extreme coginitive bias - that is, there is a narrative that you want to believe, so you are creating your own subjective reality. Why would you do that?
I'm also looking at you two:
and asking the same question.