On April 4, the Security Division of Tokyo Police Department arrested four men, including Ryosuke Imamura, 37, manager of the sex industry recruitment website “Dekasegi Sharumu(海外出稼ぎシャルム)” in Osaka, and company officer Yoshio Usui, 53 in Tokyo, for allegedly facilitating prostitution of Japanese women overseas. This is the first case in Japan that involves the provision of information on harmful business recruitment that has been exposed.
The department says that the website was set up around June 2021, advertising “monthly income of over 5 million yen” and “work overseas”, etc. In three years, 200-300 Japanese women were dispatched to brothels in the USA, Canada and Australia, with sales of approximately 200 million yen.
They were arrested around February of last year, as the suspects posted information on the website about prostitution jobs and introduced two Japanese women in their 20’s and 30’s whom applied to brothels in New York and Washington, respectively.
Imamura denied some of the charges, saying he didn’t think they were recruiting for prostitution work, while Usui and three others admitted to the charges.
