The Wakayama Prefectural Police revealed on May 8, 2024 that Your Name. movie producer Koichiro Itou has been referred to prosecutors for additional violation
The Wakayama Prefectural Police revealed on May 8, 2024 that Your Name. movie producer Koichiro Itou has been referred to prosecutors for additional violation of Child Prostitution & Pornography law in Japan, after it came to light that he had paid an underage girl for sexual intercourse.
The latest case involved a 17-year-old high school girl from Yokohama. Investigators believe Itou knew the girl was a minor when he paid her 30,000 yen for having sexual intercourse at his residence in December 2023.
He is also suspected of taking and saving photographs of the act.
30,000 Yen is only about $300 in USD (using the "move the decimal point" method). That's a pretty cheap price...but it's probably going to cost him a lot more, especially if they find any photos
If you compare that to the average cost of living in Japan it's a bit closer to $300 in terms of spending power.
Either way it's a lot cheaper than I'd expect to have to pay anyone for sex work, much less something that blatantly illegal.
Oh, as for the age of consent thing that change just made it a national crime. Every prefecture in Japan had already raised the age of consent to 16 (or higher) well before last year. The only places it didn't apply were some remote military bases and IIRC the portion of Antarctica that Japan claims. Still a good move but it's not like Japanese pedos were just having sex with 13-year-olds without consequence before then.
Prostitution is illegal in japan but individual provinces have a higher age of consent than the country so it's a mute point anyways. He was being illegal.
Certain services, I guess is the word, are not illegal. Penis-in-vagina sex definitely is, but a lot of other stuff seems not to be due to the way the laws are written. So, depending upon what he did, some may violate laws about age of consent, some prostitution, some both. What a piece of shit.
I certainly hope so. Japan is notoriously light on punishment for pedophilia. They usually just give small fines for people found with child pornography, no matter the amount.
Do you think that makes it better just because the payoff was cheap? Or that the low monetary value degrades the victims such that you shouldn’t care? Either way, I’d argue that makes it all the more fucking disgusting and horrible.
If your whole argument is, “oh, but he got a bargain deal on all the corruption and prostitution!” Then you belong in jail right next to this scumbag.