American tourist arrested in Japan on charges of pushing sexual services worker down stairs

Senior citizen arrested at ski resort three hours away from fuzoku establishment where incident allegedly took place.

The circumstances requiring it are deplorable, but it’s time, once again, for an instalment of “words they probably don’t teach you in Japanese class.” Today’s topic: fuzoku.

Fuzoku is a complex term to explain, and the two kanji characters that it’s written with aren’t very helpful. The first, 風, usually means “wind,” but as we’ve seen before, it can also mean a style or manner of doing things. The second kanji in fuzoku, 俗, is even harder to pin down, as it can be used to express concepts ranging from “common” and “popular” to “base” and “profane.” Putting those kanji together as fuzoku created, originally, a word used to indicate the idea of “manners and customs.” That then got extended to the idea of “things people do for entertainment or amusement,” and eventually that got narrowed down to how the word fuzoku is most commonly used in modern Japanese conversation: to refer to in-person sexual and sexualized entertainment such as hostess bars, strip show theaters, and sensual massage parlor/dispatch services.

Fuzoku is an especially tricky word to translate into English since it encompasses things that might seem, in English-speaking regions, laughably quaint (“You can pay to have a pretty lady sit next to and talk with you while you drink!”) and also startlingly scandalous (“You can pay to have a woman get naked, lather herself up with soap, and wash you like her body is a sponge!”). But here’s the important thing to remember: fuzoku businesses aren’t brothels. Customers don’t pay a fee in exchange for permission to have sex with the workers, and there are limits, which vary by establishment, as to what customers can ask for and do.

This distinction seems to have been lost on a 69-year-old American man traveling in Japan. On the afternoon of February 3, the man, who is a retiree living in Thailand, visited a fuzoku business in Sapporo, the capital of Japan’s northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido. While there and in the company of one of the female employees, he began asking for/attempting services that the establishment does not allow. When a member of the staff, a 39-year-old man, cautioned the customer about his behavior, the senior citizen allegedly became angry, and in the ensuing altercation knocked the male employee down a flight of stairs within the building the fuzoku establishment is located within. The employee suffered contusions to the head, arms, legs, and chest in the fall, as well as a sprained neck.

The customer then fled the scene at approximately 3:20 in the afternoon, but investigators were able to track him to the hotel he was staying at in Niseko, one of Hokkaido’s most popular ski resorts, where he was arrested on charges of assault on February 6.

▼ It’s about a three to three-and-a-half-hour train ride from Sapporo to Niseko, so no, the police were not fooling around on this case.

The man, who reportedly does not speak Japanese, is disputing a portion of the charges, though precisely which part is unclear. Regardless of whether he’s convicted or set free, though, the whole incident serves as a very important reminder that fuzoku establishments are, once again, not brothels, and that going beyond the limits of what that particular location allows can get customers in serious trouble, especially in the current social climate of Japanese locals and municipalities growing increasingly tired of bad behavior by inbound overseas tourists.

Source: Hokkaido News UHB, HBC, Sapporo TV
Top image: Pakutaso
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