IN THE RUNAWAY Japanese bestseller Ayu no Monogatari (Ayu's Story), the eponymous young hero trades the hated world of straitjacket teachers and semi-detached parents for life as a teenage prostitute, servicing middle-aged men in cheap love hotels.
With 1.2 million copies sold and counting, the novel has clearly struck a chord with Japan's youth, even as most adults react with horror to its graphic depiction of a Tokyo underworld of predatory older males and prematurely sexualized high-school girls.
The trouble, say parents, is that the novel is too close to home for comfort. The story, and the purpose-built youth mecca of Shibuya, where much of it is set, encapsulates their deepest fears about modern Japanese urban life and its effect on their kids. A swarming district of fashion boutiques, restaurants and clubs built around the western hub of Tokyo's major train lines, Shibuya hosts millions of youngsters each year, who come to shop, eat and play.
But the surrounding district also incubates hundreds of massage parlours, flesh joints and porno companies, part of a booming sex industry that is always hungry for young flesh. Shibuya is also ground zero for so-called enjo kosai, or compensated dating, a murky form of prostitution arranged between older men and high-school girls often looking for extra pocket money. For youngsters, Shibuya offers all that money can buy and the dubious means to get it. 'I worry so much about my kids going there,' says housewife Naoko Shimoda, who has three teenage children. 'I've tried to tell them to be careful and not to do anything stupid, but I can't stop them going if they want to. It would just make them more curious.'
Shibuya's volatile mix of consumerism, youth and sex has been brewing up minor scandals for years, but it took 29-year-old paedophile Kotaro Yoshisato to finally cause a storm that made the nation's front pages.
Yoshisato had been using high-school scouts to recruit school children in Shibuya for months when he persuaded four elementary school girls last summer to take a taxi ride to his apartment by telling them they could earn some money. When police broke into the apartment four days later they found the terrified girls in a room next to the body of Yoshisato, who had committed suicide, along with lists of paedophile clients and schoolgirl prostitutes, many only elementary school age. Yoshisato's business was lucrative: he reportedly had millions of yen stashed in bank accounts, two Ferraris in the driveway and paid his huge hotel bills in cash.