The Glico billboard in Osaka’s Dotonbori is one of the city’s most recognizable spots and tourist draws. It’s also becoming a draw for young girls who feel they have nowhere else to go. Sadly, those same girls have become the target of men looking to take advantage of their desperate circumstances.
Girls and young women in Japan have often sought refuge in areas like Tokyo’s Kabukicho. Some turn to prostitution, either to make ends meet or to feed an addiction to host clubs. (Or because hosts and concept cafe workers have pressured them into it.)
Osaka has seen similar problems in areas such as Umeda. The road under the sign for famous Pocky manufacturer Glico – known as グリ下 (guri-shita), “Under Glico” – in Dotonbori has also become a draw for runaways who say they don’t have anywhere else to go. Of those surveyed in 2023 by the NPO DxP, 46% said they felt like didn’t feel like their parents’ house or a shelter were safe spaces for them.
One of the assailants was a high school teacher
Sadly, unscrupulous men in Japan are always looking for ways to take advantage of the country’s at-risk youth. I wrote years ago about how some were using X (formerly Twitter) hashtags to identify and target runaways looking for a place to stay.
Now, some are targeting the runaways of Dotonbori. Yomiuri Shimbun reports on a 29-year-old man who is being charged with forcing a 16-year-old girl to prostitute herself and pay him “rent” for living with him. The girl says the thug told her that, if she didn’t do as she said, he’d go to Under Glico and beat up her friends.
In a separate incident, reports Sankei Shimbun, a (now former) 26-year-old high school teacher was arrested for sexually assaulting a middle school girl who was part of the Under Glico community. Yomiuri says the man used the hashtag ＃グリ下 界隈 (guri-shita kaiwai, “Under Glico Circle”), to find and target her.
Fear that shelters will “conflict” with parental rights
To counter the rise in assaults, police set up security cameras in 2023. They also stepped up efforts to intervene and attempt to find at-risk girls a stable and safe place to stay.
Japan’s central government is offering funds to municipalities to stand up shelters to address this chronic problem. However, they say they’ve seen little success with this strategy. One person with Japan’s Children and Family Agencies says it may be that local governments are reluctant to run facilities that conflict with parents who assert their parental rights.
When cities do stand up facilities, they often find themselves with another problem: men targeting the shelters. Osaka, for example, has increased the number of shelters for at-risk youth near Dotonbori from two to seven. However, as a result, it’s seeing more cases of shelter residents themselves trying to lure girls into prostitution.
Municipalities and the central government continue to evolve new strategies on how to best help at-risk youth and keep girls safe. For now, this remains a persistent problem with no overnight solution.
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