JAPAN: Phone Dating under Scrutiny after Young Girl’s Death

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Sep 25 2001 (IPS) - The arrest this month of a high school teacher linked to the death of a 12-year-old girl with whom he got acquainted through the telephone, puts the spotlight on telephone dating clubs that have sprouted across Japan.

Ken Fukumoto, 34, was arrested on Sep. 8 after police traced him through the victim’s mobile phone. He told police he got to know Noriko Kamie through the phone dating club.

He said he had planned to have sex with her and videotape the scene in return for money. But the 12-year-old girl jumped out of the car while they were driving on an expressway last July.

Police found Kamie handcuffed and bleeding on a highway in Kobe last July 24. She was taken to a hospital where she died the following day. They theorised that while she lay on the road after escaping from her captor, she was hit by another vehicle, hence the broken skull.

Earlier that day, Kamie, a middle-school student, told her friends she was going to “meet a male friend” who had called her on her mobile phone, but whom she had never met before.

There have been a few killings of women by male dates they met through the phone or website dating system, but the death of 12-year-old Kamie sent shock waves across Japan.

The tragedy also highlighted the pitfalls of Japan’s widely used telephone dating clubs and the lack of protection for children in this system.

In May, a 25-year old man was arrested in Kyoto for allegedly killing a 19-year-old college student he became acquainted with through a wesbite dating system. The arrested male teacher was reported to have had several other liaisons with high school girls he met through the dating system.

“There is a clear evidence the telephone dating system is a hotbed for teenage prostitution,” says Yoshie Takahashi of Stop Child Prostitution, an non-governmental organisation working to stop the widespread sale of child pornography in Japan.

The telephone dating system, ‘telekura’ for short in Japanese, developed with the rapid growth of mobile phone users in the last three years and is now firmly entrenched in Japanese society.

Police estimate there are almost 4,000 operating dating clubs across Japan, with some clubs believed to have more than 30,000 men registered as members.

They are widely viewed as promoting prostitution, including of children, and have been regulated under prefectural ordinances.

Of the 836 cases of child prostitution recorded last year, 53 percent involved telephone dating clubs.

A male mobile phone owner can register himself in one of the ‘telekura’ clubs for a fee and call a female member registered in the same club. He pays for the call and introduction separately.

Female members, mostly young girls, register their numbers under pseudonyms. They do not pay to register and call toll-free.

Often, operators of these clubs have no fixed premises, an arrangement that makes it difficult to verify information about them or track them down. Men can register at pornographic video shops or adult shops.

Surveys conducted by the Tokyo metropolitan government last year reveal that the system is hugely popular among the Japanese.

More than 25 percent of female high school students covered in the survey replied they had dialed the dating clubs to register their mobile phone numbers.

“It’s just fun to get a call from a man you don’t know,” said a high school student interviewed recently on Japanese television. “I am not planning to meet him or anything and besides I get paid a little to chat with the man, so it’s like having some extra income to play with.”

The survey also revealed that some women registered in the dating clubs answered as many as 100 calls a day. Those who were polled said they sometimes met the men and enjoyed being taken out to expensive dinners and being gifted with clothes.

The Japanese government passed a new law in June requiring telephone club operators to confirm that their clients are more than 18 years old. But many dating clubs simply ignored the law.

Controlling these clubs that are registered only on the Internet is not easy, says a police spokesman.

Professor Yasuyuki Kawahara, who teaches social psychology at Yokohama City University, says the anonymity of telephone dating is especially appealing to the Japanese who find it easier to reveal their true feelings through the computer.

“The Japanese are restricted in personal relationships because of strict social norms that frown on revealing their true feelings among people they know,” he explains. “Thus, meeting unknown people through the Internet gives them a feeling of being free from social norms.”

The National Police Agency has proposed stricter laws that include asking telephone dating clubs to require prospective female customers to present identification for safety and security reasons.

The police agency also wants to set a fine of up to one million yen (8,500 U.S. dollars) on operators who ignore the law.

But opponents wonder whether this will protect children.

” ‘Terekura’ can be easly stopped by banning such services,” says Yoshioka Shiro, an activist against child prostitution in developing countries. “But the government is dragging is feet because it is a big business and involves the mobile phone market and the telecommunications market,” he adds.