Society

Tokyo: 'Delivery health' business exploited loophole in employing underage girls

Feb 06 (tokyoreporter.com) - Tokyo Metropolitan Police have busted a so-called "delivery health" business that is believed to have exploited a legal loophole in employing high school girls to provide sex services, reports Sankei Sports.

According to police, management of JK Parfait, which is located in the Ikebukuro area of Toshima Ward, registered the business as a fuzoku (or commercial sex) operation under the Law Regulating Adult Entertainment Businesses in October of last year.

The move was believed to have been made to evade falling under a municipal ordinance that went into effect the previous July that restricts the employment of persons under the age of 18 in certain service businesses, with fuzoku businesses not being among them.

On November 27, Osamu Yoshii, the 53-year-old manager of JK Parfait, and one other employee allegedly dispatched a girl, aged 17 at the time, to a hotel in Toshima to provide services deemed obscene while knowing she was under 18.

JK Parfait solicited customers via Twitter by claiming that currently enrolled high school girls (known as joshi kosei, or simply JK) provided massages. Through the end of last year, earnings totaled 700,000 yen. Of the 16 women on staff, six of them were under 18, police said.

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