Aging lonely man meets young sexy woman. She smiles, winks, beckons. The man’s soul lights up. Is this it, the magic moment, the fateful encounter, so long awaited, so long denied? She leads, he follows. She kindles love in his heart, bides her time, seizes the moment: She needs money, wants presents, fancies luxury dining. Dazed with happiness, he gives, and gives and gives. The awakening when it comes is rude.
It’s an old story, forever new, the more so now as the aging lonely male population rises with the solitary lifestyle and young sexy females decline with the falling birth rate. Spa (Nov 19) offers a novel twist. Lately, it finds, men are fighting back, as if to say, “Take care, young women, we’re no longer the easy marks you take us for.”
What weapons do they wield? Essentially, three: court, media and – but this is extreme and the man portrayed here shrinks from it in the end – stalking.
“Yusuke” (names in quote marks are pseudonyms) was 51 when he met “Hiromi” at a neighborhood cabaret. She worked there. They clicked. They dated, they laughed, they played, it was very bright. Her hamster was sick; he paid the vet. Family inheritance tax was weighing her down; he paid that too. There was this, there was that, and if he demurred she would laugh and say, “Well then, I’ll find a man more generous than you!” – and take him by the hand and lead him, unresisting now, to the nearest ATM.
It was his mother, with whom he lived, who took him gently to task. He’s a company employee, reasonably prosperous but not limitlessly so. Wasn’t he spending too much?
A man distracted fails to see the obvious with his own eyes, but a word well chosen is awakening and yes, he conceded, maybe he was. A sober look at the accounts showed 10 million yen gone. “I’ll pay you back,” said Hiromi, “a little at a time” – but made no move to do so.
She’s playing you for a fool, said his mother in effect, and, facing the fact at last, he consulted an NPO which recommended a private detective who uncovered (at a cost of 4 million yen) the tawdry truth: Everything about the woman he thought he knew – her age, her name, her appearance – was false. She wasn’t in her 20s (though she looked it) but 48, with a grownup daughter
He took her to civil court and won a settlement, which proved to be worth no more than her willingness to abide by it – in a word, nothing. There remains criminal court. Should he proceed?
Spa asks lawyer Sakura Kamitani to assess the odds. Not good, she says. Fraud is notoriously hard to prove. If Hiromi claims she was merely accepting gifts, what evidence is there to the contrary? The best hope, says Kamitani, is that the prospect of a trial will scare her into coming to terms – any terms, likely the merest fraction of the loss but better than nothing (or maybe not, factoring in legal fees). Still, Yusuke is determined to proceed. It’s not about money now, he says. It’s revenge.
“Yoshinori,” 36, met “Noriko” via a matching app. Their first date was at a family restaurant. She’s a hairdresser by day and a “girls’ bar” hostess evenings; we’re not told what he does but evidently, like Yusuke, he’s not poor. The friendship deepened. Six months later she announced, “It’s my birthday, let’s go to a really nice restaurant.” “Sure,” said Yoshinori, “anywhere you like.” His jaw dropped a bit when they approached the place she’d chosen: this was “really nice” with a vengeance, and really expensive to match, one could see at a glance. Well, never mind, how often does a woman like Noriko come into a man’s life? “If she’s happy, I’m happy,” he thought happily. She studied the menu, ordered caviar, then champagne at 230,000 yen (sic) a bottle.
His wits fuddled by love and then by drink, he lost track of things. Somewhere along the line, it’s not clear how, she got hold of his credit card and before he noticed she and her girls’ bar colleagues made merry with it.
After the party, the hangover. He’d been tricked, deceived, robbed, his love trampled in the mud. He consulted a lawyer who concluded there was no case. The police, too, turned him away – but called him back a few days later. Yes, they said, the woman was known to them, she was “bait” plied by a gang of fraudsters; would Yoshinori cooperate by sharing his story with the media? He would indeed, he replied – which explains, presumably, how we come to read about him in Spa.
“Kazuhiko,” 52 and living alone, struck up a conversation in a bar with a woman in her 20s, and the intimacies that followed ran the familiar course from talk to play to love on his part and demands for money on hers, until one day suddenly she disappeared without a word. Frantic with worry he spent hours wringing his hands outside her apartment. When at last, weeks later, she answered his ring, it was only to let him know she wanted no more to do with him. What is he to do? There’s no question of criminal proceedings, no laws having been broken. Should he stalk the woman and make her life miserable? No, that far he won’t go; it would turn him into the criminal. A sad and costly lesson the affair taught him. He must be content with being that much the wiser.
What does it all mean? Spa asks Koichi Nakagawa, professor of business management. It’s significant that the magazine turns to a business scholar rather than a psychologist or sociologist. The young women are indeed, in their own minds, business people innocently engaged in a business pursuit, deploying assets (youth, beauty, vivacity) to satisfy a demand. “It’s only natural,” Nakagawa imagines them thinking to themselves, their consciences perfectly at rest, “for my young beautiful self to get paid for keeping company with ugly middle-aged men.” Cold ethic for a cold world.
© Japan Today
24 Comments
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daikaka
Most of these women still live poverty lives, because most are making money to pay for hosts.
The only beneficiary from this entire scheme are hosts who are the main drivers of female criminality over the past decade. With continued exponential growth of host markets and many hosts making over 100M annually, lack of serious government enforcement, and massive influence the top host groups have on politics and entertainment industry, these problems will get worse
DanteKH
It is so amazing on how so many men are so naive and guillable falling for those kinds of women. The red flags are everywhere, yet they still don't see them and further proceed to digg themselves even more with those king of relationships.
99.99% of women that works in Girls bars, snack bars, kabakuras, or adult industry are there only for the money, and they will try to leach as much as they can out of those naive and silly men.
Sadly that's the reason that Japan, but not only, has so few Alfa males, real men thst can attract women by their action, attitude, etc, not just by their fat account or power and social status.
ThonTaddeo
As bad as these scamming women are, let's not let this part go unnoticed:
That's a year's salary for a younger salarymen (or an older one, past 60 and on the post-career shokutaku track). Are these private detectives' expenses really that high, or are they, too, preying on these older men?
Sven Asai
Where's the problem? They don't want to work hard from 9 to 5 for nothing and make their business and good money in that sector. Men usually don't have that chance and also only a few men make it up to a company boss or leading employee with significant income. So both small richer groups match and meet there. The big rest of us is not affected by that. It's been our majority choice of living poor, straight, conservative and within the accepted bandwidth, not in grey zones or under red lights.
GillislowTier
Thankfully in Japan, an older man who peruses women 30+ years younger than him, gives her money, etc. despite meeting her in a shady location where he pays exorbitant fees just to talk to her… are not criticized
These things are always a two way street. She needs money, he’s willing to give it. Always hate sugar daddies acting like victims. They know the game.
Aikokushin Senshi
"If you love someone, deny their requests for money. If they come back to you, they're yours. If they don't, they never were."
1glenn
"A sucker is born every minute....."
1glenn
Japan is not the only country that has trouble with con-men and women. Heck, we just elected a con-man to be President.
kohakuebisu
That's an impressive long game from the lady. She actually met him several times before setting up the sting? That's way more than the Itadaki Joshi Riri manual which just talks about spamming targets with messages. If a woman physically meets you several times before taking you to the bottakuri ("rip off") bar, many men will fall for this. I wouldn't blame the guy for being naive. Meeting a guy several times also lets the guy gather all kinds of info on the lady that could possibly help the police afterward. Classic bottakuri bar is just get the guy in the bar using touts, drug him, and then frogmarch him to the cashpoint before emptying the account and leaving him on a park bench somewhere. 60-90 minutes will probably do it, not six months. I'm surprised they even bother leaving it six months before the "birthday" and don't strike as soon as the iron is hot.
Peter Neil
older men with money and younger women is nothing new. as old as time.
in the west, the women get more money because they’re more patient. they string it out to marriage, get divorced and half of what he has left after the other younger wife took half of what he had.
himawari23
They can “fight back” by dating people in their own age bracket and stop being so gullible.
Peter Neil
you date someone you’re own age.
i like younger women. keeps me young and there are more things to learn from each other. and i’m not gullible, i’m delighted.
the problem with people who are the same age with the same ideas and same interests is you don’t have much to talk about.
kohakuebisu
You don't have anything to talk about with people with the same interests?
Peter Neil
sure, i don’t mean such absolutes about interests.
shared values are the important thing.
GBR48
Having a trophy wife/GF is expensive. Nothing wrong with PAYG, but keep an eye on the meter. And take a look in the mirror every now and again to keep your feet on the ground. Life is not a faery tale/romance novel.
Mocheake
No guy, especially a fifty or sixty year old guy should EVER think that he is going to go into a girls bar, kabakura, strip club, etc and come out with a hottie head over high heels in love with him. Self-esteem problems, your own hubris and sweet talk can be pretty powerful in making you a sucker so don't go to those places looking for "love." You're only going to find pain and a much lighter wallet.
Bye! Don't let the door hit you in the thong on the way out.
I' ve told that to a few guys over the years but some didn't have the willpower. I'm not a misogynist and I try to give women kind of the same advice when they have money trouble with men in that way.
Tim Sullivan
Legalizing polygamy would help older rich men to share their wealth around instead of spending it all on one person. The women would benefit as well. Polygamy -- you know it makes sense!
1glenn
My problem with the situations described in the article is that the men are unsuspecting dupes. I would have less trouble accepting the relationships if the transactions were above board and honest.
I knew several young, attractive women who let themselves be supported by older men while they were attending university. It enabled the women to avoid going into debt, and they had the company of rich, courteous older men, without any expectation of being together forever. One later became a school teacher, another became a psychiatrist and successful author. They seemed very well adjusted to me. Both came from low income backgrounds, but were very beautiful and very smart. So far as I could tell, no one was hurt.
Of course some women allow themselves to be kept because they don't have job skills, and it is the easiest way for them to support themselves without going on the dole. I try not to judge.
Fossil
How do you fight back Timmy?
Tim Sullivan
How do you fight back Timmy?
I don't. Life is too short. In my somewhat limited experience (three marriages), Japanese women are happy with very little. They just want the ring on the third finger, left hand.
Tim Sullivan
I knew several young, attractive women who let themselves be supported by older men while they were attending university. It enabled the women to avoid going into debt, and they had the company of rich, courteous older men, without any expectation of being together forever. One later became a school teacher, another became a psychiatrist and successful author. They seemed very well adjusted to me. Both came from low income backgrounds, but were very beautiful and very smart. So far as I could tell, no one was hurt.
And you don't get judgmental or envious looks when you dine with someone who is old enough to be your daughter. That's one of the things I love about his country.
Mocheake
If both people are mature enough to understand the situation, why not? I've seen similar situations you describe. One one my former bosses was involved with a much younger hostess. We all used to go out and have a blast. He took very good care of her and they seemed happy. To the astonishment everyone in our immediate circle, a year or so later she decided to move to the States and not his even money could talk her out of it. I hope she got was she was looking for there but I have no idea. He was devastated.
Fossil
Three marriages? Damn Timmy. With polygamy your divorces would explode exponentially.
Burgerland
Three marriages? Damn Timmy. With polygamy your divorces would explode exponentially.
LOL.