Three men arrested for allegedly forcing woman into performing in adult video
January 19, 2018 (Mainichi Japan)
Three men including an adult video (AV) production company president have been arrested on suspicion of forcing an inexperienced woman in her 20s to perform indecent acts on camera for commercial purposes, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) announced on Jan. 19.
The suspects include former AV star talent agency employee Takaaki Yukimoto, 35, of Yokohama, and AV production company president Hitoshi Nakano, 51, of Tokyo. They are suspected of “inducement to promiscuous intercourse” under the Penal Code and other offences related to the June 2015 video shoot. The MPD security division believes that the woman was forced into the acts, and is investigating. Nakano has reportedly denied the charges, while the other two suspects have admitted to the allegations.
According to the security division, the woman signed a contract with the agency in April 2015 to shoot AV. However, as the contents of the shoot were too extreme, she refused to film the video, to which the suspects reportedly said, “How much do you think shooting this costs?” and other comments compelling her to go through with the performance. While seeking advice from a support group, the woman submitted a damage claim to the MPD.
This is the first time that the Penal Code charge of inducement to promiscuous intercourse has been applied to a case of a performer being forced to act in an adult video against their wishes. Until now, similar cases have been treated as violating laws such as the dispatched workers act. Moreover, it had been difficult to make a case against adult video production companies, to which the actors are dispatched from their agencies. In the latest case, however, police decided that the production firm that forced her to perform in the video could be subject to criminal investigation under the Penal Code statute.
The case highlights the ongoing issue in the AV industry concerning coercion and forced performances. The Mainichi Shimbun spoke with a Kanto area woman in her 20s about her experiences being forced into filming scenes. In order to request AV distribution companies to delete the videos in which she appeared, she has listed all the titles in a brown notebook that she clung to during the interview. There were more than 50 productions listed. “It’s sad,” she said. “I really believed them when they said ‘you’ll be famous.'”
She began working in the industry after she was scouted in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward five years ago. The scout called out to her on the street, “Won’t you become a model?” She had just moved to Tokyo upon marriage. She had wanted to become a model, and was swayed by the scout’s smooth pitch.
Two weeks later, she had an interview with the agency president. When she went to the office in Shinjuku Ward, she was told she wouldn’t be modeling, but doing adult videos instead. “Becoming famous starts from appearing in AV,” they told her, “That actress once did AV too.” Surrounded by three men who cajoled her for two hours, the woman signed the contract.
“It was like I had been brainwashed,” she recalled. “No matter how extreme the content got, I was in a psychological state where I couldn’t refuse.” Even when she tried to say no in tears, she was told, “We can’t stop shooting now.” She received about 30,000 yen per performance.
Around February 2017, she went to a support group that she had learned about in the news online. She searched for videos in which she appeared so she could request their deletion through a lawyer, and confirmed 55 titles over a three-year span. Most distributors complied with her requests, but some foreign sites lacked contact information to send the requests, and the videos remain online.
“Appearing in adult videos has left emotional scars, and the film data remains as well,” she lamented, eyes dropping to the list in her notebook. “That can never be erased.”
