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The story
The operators of a soapland and a ‘health’ brothel in Taku-cho, Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture, were arrested by September 9th on suspicion of violating the Anti-Prostitution Law by providing a venue for prostitution to customers. Police say they are stepping up enforcement to clean up the city’s red-light district. In the thread, some pointed out that soaplands have long operated under the legal fiction of ‘providing a place for free love,’ others speculated about the real reason behind the raid, and opinions split over whether tougher enforcement is actually a good idea, given it could push more women into street solicitation and raise the risk of sexually transmitted infections.
The operators of two sex-industry establishments in Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture — a soapland and a ‘health’ brothel — were arrested by September 9th on suspicion of violating the Anti-Prostitution Law by providing a venue for prostitution. Police say they are stepping up enforcement to clean up the red-light district.
The raided establishments were a soapland and a ‘health’ shop located in Taku-cho, Matsuyama City.
In the soapland case, the person arrested on September 9th was a 68-year-old man who runs the sex-industry business and lives in Minamidoi-cho, Matsuyama City.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
It's not officially about sex services or anything
That's basically love at this point
Weren't soaplands illegal from the start anyway?
They're a necessary evil for preventing sex crimes!
I'd want to run a brothel called
'Boner-chan' (a pun on 勃つ, 'to get hard')
Are dogs banned from entering?
Aim for the 'Boner-chan Koshien'! (a mock nod to Japan's famous high school baseball tournament)
You trying to make more rapists?
That's an extreme take, but yeah, pretty much. Nobody wins.
They go easy on politicians but crack down hard on the little guy
A so-called 'good shop'?
Some places have both a 'health' course and a 'soapland' course
Depends on how much you pay
So what's the real reason?
1. Funding source for organized crime
2. Employing minors
3. Trouble with local residents
4. Workers brokered by host clubs
5. Employing undocumented foreign workers
An internet cafe is still cheaper even if you bring your own onahole (male sex toy)
If they really wanted to clean things up they'd raid every single place with 'soapland' in the name
The fact that they don't shows it's entirely down to the mood of the police and those in power
If they did that, the police themselves should be charged with something too
That's something that must never be lost (a signature soapland service)
(°∀°) I'm a bed guy myself. Haven't had the real thing yet, though.
(°∀°)つ Here, have some tea~
(/◎＼) *gulp*
It's been normal since the Edo period.
Soaplands, no good
You risk becoming a criminal depending on your girlfriend or wife's mood
The age of the virgin reigning supreme has finally arrived
An off-premises date is fine though.
History has proven that breeds crime and spreads STDs and disease
Haven't we learned anything yet!?
That's exactly the STD that's already spreading.
Just shutting down brothels and calling the town 'cleaned up' is only surface-level — if they don't properly face and address that downside as part of the plan, I think it'll only make public safety and disease spread worse
Most recent brothel raids are tied to illegal recruiting/scouting issues anyway, so that's being prioritized over street walkers
Go to a soapland waiting room and it's packed with paunchy middle-aged guys and bald old men, you know?
The reality is men build up sexual urges even when they're dirty and smelly
Sex workers just quietly put up with it for the money
Is it really better to have the streets full of street walkers instead?
If it's all street walkers, you have to watch out for honey-trap scams — guys like me actually check sites like City Heaven Net to see if a shop is safe first
It's rough for old guys like that if they're single
I'm starting to think soaplands might be necessary to keep them from going off the rails
There's long been suspicion that the sex industry runs 'it's-me' phone-scam-style schemes
There were stories of them calling customers out of the blue long after the fact, threatening to tell their employer unless they paid extra
Maybe this ties into the Cambodia scam compounds
That might be the real reason behind the raid
You're just assuming they're miserable, but they're doing it because they want to
Because it's a quick way to make money
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Soaplands are licensed under the Adult Entertainment Business Law as ‘private-room bathhouse businesses,’ and the sexual services provided inside have officially operated under the pretense of ‘free love between customer and employee.’ What the Anti-Prostitution Law actually bans is sexual intercourse in exchange for payment itself — an operator becomes subject to prosecution once they’re found to have ‘provided the venue’ for it. This structure hasn’t changed in decades, and as commenter #42 in the thread notes, the idea that soaplands ‘provide a place for free love’ as a legal fiction is common knowledge within the industry. At the same time, why exactly these two shops were singled out this time isn’t clear from the article alone, and the thread was full of speculation — ties to organized crime, employment of minors, kickbacks from scouts — none of which has been confirmed by reporting. Whether tougher enforcement leads to fewer brothels but more street solicitation and a higher risk of sexually transmitted infections is a long-running debate, and this thread saw the same arguments for and against play out once again.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Breaking News+) thread ‘Matsuyama Soapland and Health Brothel Raided — Providing a Venue for Prostitution — Crackdown to Clean Up the Red-Light District [Ehime].’
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