3 women arrested for operating massage parlor offering sex services

I recall being out in town in Olongapo, just outside the gate to the big naval base at Subic Bay, listening to a band in a local bar. There was simply no way back then for an unaccompanied male to be out in such venues without a bar girl plopping herself in your lap and cooing something like "ooooh, guapo". I hadn't yet learned that you had to find an American woman to go out with you to keep the bar girls off you. I wasn't interested in sex and didn't buy them the overpriced "ladies drink", just wanted to listen to this guitarist play Steppenwolf songs every bit as good as Steppenwolf could, and I've seen them a couple of times btw. So I asked this bar girl on my lap why she doesn't get the hades out of there and do something with her life? Her answer has stuck with me all these years. She told me she couldn't leave, she owed the mamma-san too much money, a debt incurred when her mother sold her into prostitution, and if she left the police (realize Ferdinand Marcos was still the dictator there) would arrest her and bring her back to the bar. I did notice that once Marcos was thrown out you didn't see the legions of pimple faced teenage boys in poorly made uniforms walking around with automatic weapons.

Desert TortoiseToday 03:38 am JST

A question everybody needs to ask themselves is who is being harmed by this service.

Much of the workforce are sex slaves, often from abroad. They are lured with promises of other kinds of work, but upon arrival their sponsors confiscate their passports and lock them up in a home forcing them to work as sex workers.

That is usually the case. Of course, some do it out of their own free will to help pay expenses (college tuition, fancy clothes...), but these are probably women not from abroad. I suppose it would be difficult to determine which is which. If these women are from abroad and not in possession of their own passports, then that is one key indication of human trafficking. Just google "signs of human trafficking", especially associated with massage parlors. There is much information there.

Even companies like Toyota can do this with factory workers from other countries.

No Toyota does not do this. Their factories and workforce are far too visible for them to even think of using forced labor like that. I doubt any of their subcontractors could do it either. Really where do you come up with such things?

Human trafficking and forced labor is most prevalent in agriculture including deep sea fishing (big problem for Thailand), domestic work, low skill factory work, bars & nightclubs and the hospitality industry. Some estimates put about 70% of female sex workers as being trafficked into forced labor. Even if not trafficked from abroad pimps and madams are not model employers. It is almost always an exploitive relationship. Nice to see you see nothing wrong with any of this though.

Why is it that these operators are only ever arrested when its a foreign owned business but the hundreds or even thousands of Japanese owned businesses that provide the exact same services go virtually untouched?

Very often, probably in the majority of the cases, brothels owned by foreign nationals are using persons trafficked from abroad and held against their will as their workforce. The business owners are working with criminals in their home nation to recruit girls into prostitution. They look for girls and young women from broken homes who are desperate, lie to them shamelessly about the nature of work they are being recruited into abroad claiming they will do some sort of glamorous and/or high paying work but once the ladies arrive in the foreign country in which they will work, their new employer confiscates all of their passports and other identifying documents and forces them into slavery. The girls often can't back home even if they could escape because they would be disowned by their families, and in some cases killed by them for shaming their family. This is real life, not this fantasy that nobody is hurt by a little extra during a massage.

A question everybody needs to ask themselves is who is being harmed by this service.

Much of the workforce are sex slaves, often from abroad. They are lured with promises of other kinds of work, but upon arrival their sponsors confiscate their passports and lock them up in a home forcing them to work as sex workers.

@Burning Bush

A question everybody needs to ask themselves is who is being harmed by this service.

If I could give you two thumbs up, I would.

BungleJan. 19  07:29 pm JST

As a point of etiquette, do these places ask their clientele to “come again”?

Bit of a language problem there.... in Japan you are are going when you are coming.

Umm!!! Let say perhaps one of the ladies was brought there and forced to work off her debt. Lets say she met a customer that she serviced not once but several times and they both fell in love. Lets say she told him her story and then he ratted the place out so that they could be together

What a jerk reaction !

The local yakuzas made the call to the police. The proprietor failed to make her protection payment.

"It wasn't money for sex, officer! She was giving me a back rub and we fell in love. Then one thing sort of led to another. Coincidentally it was her birthday. That's what the ¥25,000 was for. Honest!"

Seriously? This is newsworthy? It would be more amazing if one were not able to find a massage parlor offering something extra.

Terrible horrible news! I'm infuriated. Something should be done now!

What was the address again? I'm asking for a friend.

Not a happy ending for the ladies involved.

I'm pretty sure a rival massage parlor tipped ratted them out or the local boss didn't receive their cut at the right time. You know, with the pandemic causing a lot of people their jobs, there will be more parlors like these.

Trying to earn a yen in a pandemic...

Someone didn't pay off the right person, because this is certainly not the only one that could easily be found.

Police arrested Liu and her employees, also Chinese, after a tip-off from a caller saying that the spa was offering more than just massages.

Oh my, the police must have been shocked. Captain Renault comes to mind...

Wonder if this "caller" had anything to do with the women not paying off the right hands.

Burning BushToday  06:55 am JST

A question everybody needs to ask themselves is who is being harmed by this service.

Withe pandemic everybody is!

As many people here say, sex offering services themselves are not the bad things. However, though whether or not it is true, Japanese laws try to protect women's sexual rights regardless of their will. That is, the services like sex offerings often cause problems like illegal porn, rape, and so on, between men and women which are subject to this matter. In order to prevent this, it is radical to ban women from providing that services, and men from getting the services. If there were no crime like illegal porn, rape, and so on, women would have the rights to do it.

I want to know what kind of messed up person would call to complain.

Someone who couldn't afford their massages!

Police said Liu has admitted to the charge and quoted her as saying the spa made about 80,000 yen a day from sex services, totaling about 14 million yen since last April. 

Sounds to me like its a problem because thy were making that money un-taxed and the govt wanted their share!

Police arrested Liu and her employees, also Chinese, after a tip-off from a caller saying that the spa was offering more than just massages.

Sounds like a snitch who didn't get what he wanted or an ex employee!

Not only is there soapland, they have actual sex door to door delivery services. Don't even have to leave your home.

I want to know what kind of messed up person would call to complain.

In the land of the disgruntled... literally anyone.

A fashion massage parlor never provides sex services.

Only oral works. I remember, former president Clinton said once ''There was not sex just a bj".

If the area is not restricted for such businesses there is no problem whether the operators are Japanese, Chinese or Koreans.

Jacobo

It's not actually banned. The selling of sexual intercourse is banned. 

You're right, mine should be modified. A common narrative is that a service woman suddenly fall in love with her client amid ordinary sessions, then libido drives the rest.

The whole system is roughly equivalent to the way pachinko parlors get around the gamblings laws by giving winners trinkets that can be exchanged around the corner for cash.

A tricky part is that law enforcement officials coexist with those industries. They sometimes raid and scapegoat particular shops (as warnings to others) but never try to annihilate them altogether.

I want to know what kind of messed up person would call to complain.

An unsatisfied customer!

Believe or not, sexual intercourse is technically banned 

It's not actually banned. The selling of sexual intercourse is banned. Though most shops get around it by advertising services that do not constitute actual intercourse. And, so they say, if the intercourse occurs it can be explained away as something that just happened spontaneously between the woman and the client.

The whole system is roughly equivalent to the way pachinko parlors get around the gamblings laws by giving winners trinkets that can be exchanged around the corner for cash.

I'm pretty sure I know the location, because it's on a back street I used to walk down on my way home. It's been there for a long time. Under its previous Japanese management, it had a "Japanese only" sign on the door. I thought it had been removed because of pressure from hosting the Olympics, but now I realize the sign was taken down as a result of the new policy. The new operators were obviously color blind when it came to the color of money.

"Legalize it, don't criticize it"♪

This really isn't even newsworthy.

I want to know what kind of messed up person would call to complain.

Shouldn't the headline have been: "3 women arrested for operating massage parlor offering sex services in the wrong area"?

You're precise and correct.

Why is it that these operators are only ever arrested when its a foreign owned business but the hundreds or even thousands of Japanese owned businesses that provide the exact same services go virtually untouched?

Yes, police do arrest Japanese operators if they practice illegality (e.g. operating without licenses, or outside designated areas; That's also the case for the three Chinese above). They have raided and arrested many. Believe or not, sexual intercourse is technically banned (so "sex services" should mean other than that).

Meanwhile Kabuki-cho etc. keep 'servicing' their customers.

What is the problem?

I dont see any problem in that!

Why is it that these operators are only ever arrested when its a foreign owned business but the hundreds or even thousands of Japanese owned businesses that provide the exact same services go virtually untouched?

This parlors are all over,some right behind police stations.

Shouldn't the headline have been: "3 women arrested for operating massage parlor offering sex services in the wrong area"? Naw! Not as clickable...

A parlor offering more than just massages? How dare they!

Anyway, how’s the Soapland downtown? Are the rates fair?

I don't think these happy ending parlors will ever go away, however during times like this they should be using common sense and refrain from doing anything at all. for all parties concerned.