09-01-2002, 07:36 AM
TOKYO CONFIDENTIAL
In the blind alley of dangerous liaisons
By MARK SCHREIBER
Sunday Mainichi (Sept. 8)
"When I got to the rendezvous, the man was waiting for me in his car," recalls Mizuho (a pseudonym). "As soon as I got in, he drove straight to a hotel."
Tokyo Confidential surveys popular vernacular magazines -- often "salacious, libelous and utterly unreliable" -- to discover what the Japanese are "really thinking."
A 30-year-old divorcee living with her two children, Mizuho comes across as pert, polite and well-composed -- nothing flitty or flaky about her at all. Her one indulgence, if you could call it that, is chatting with men via a telephone-based encounter service called "two-shot dial."
The procedure is simple: You register your telephone number with the service and it uses a computer to notify an unspecified number of male subscribers, who have the option of replying. As for the rest, well, it takes two to tango.
From the list of willing candidates, Mizuho found one with a mature, self-confident way of speaking.
"I felt, well, like I really wanted to meet this guy," she explains to Sunday Mainichi.
He turned out to be around age 40, with a wife and children. Once inside the hotel room, his veneer of gentility promptly vanished when he opened a valise and brandished a variety of devices whose purpose clearly marked him as a connoisseur of sadomasochism. To Mizuho's growing horror, he snapped a dog collar around her neck and screeched, "Get down on your hands and knees, b***h, and start crawling!!"
"I was too scared to call for help," she says of her unexpected experience at humiliation. "I thought if I resisted, he'd kill me for sure."
Mizuho's case may have been somewhat extreme, but it's by no means rare for such encounters to end in grief. The National Police Agency recently announced that during the first half of 2002, reported crimes involving the various voice phone and e-mail encounter services -- referred to in Japanese as deai-kei saito -- soared 2.6-fold over the same period last year to reach 793 cases.
Among the complaints were 23 rapes and 33 incidences of criminal intimidation. Nearly 80 percent of the cases involved minors; about half involved juvenile prostitution.
While women are far more likely than men to fall victim to a crime, such encounters also take a heavy toll on males, both in terms of wrecked family lives and depleted bank accounts.
One man, hopelessly addicted to casting his net in search of a sweet young thing, was running up monthly bills as high as 140,000 yen on his cell phone. When his increasingly suspicious wife finally sneaked a peek at his incoming mail log, she saw the names were all female.
Interviewed by Sunday Mainichi via e-mail, Maya, 22, says she turned to encounter sites out of dissatisfaction with the prospects among males at her company.
"I'd like to think that somewhere, there's a Mr. Right who will fit my needs to a T," she says. "But the only way to find him is to expand the chances for meetings."
Despite the growing number of troubles reported by the media, there's no evidence that women are eschewing the encounter sites. Take Mizuho, who admits to having bedded five males whom she met via the airwaves.
Did the nervous, superficial conversation and frantic one-night stands that followed give her any real relief?
"When we embraced, at least I felt there was something real about their warmth," she says. "I never got to know anything about them. But when we left the hotel and went our separate ways, I always felt this indescribable sense of sadness."
Not even her harrowing dog-collar performance was enough to induce Mizuho to pull the plug on cyber romance.
"I'm lonely. So, so lonely," she sniffles. "There's just no end to it."
In the blind alley of dangerous liaisons
By MARK SCHREIBER
Sunday Mainichi (Sept. 8)
"When I got to the rendezvous, the man was waiting for me in his car," recalls Mizuho (a pseudonym). "As soon as I got in, he drove straight to a hotel."
Tokyo Confidential surveys popular vernacular magazines -- often "salacious, libelous and utterly unreliable" -- to discover what the Japanese are "really thinking."
A 30-year-old divorcee living with her two children, Mizuho comes across as pert, polite and well-composed -- nothing flitty or flaky about her at all. Her one indulgence, if you could call it that, is chatting with men via a telephone-based encounter service called "two-shot dial."
The procedure is simple: You register your telephone number with the service and it uses a computer to notify an unspecified number of male subscribers, who have the option of replying. As for the rest, well, it takes two to tango.
From the list of willing candidates, Mizuho found one with a mature, self-confident way of speaking.
"I felt, well, like I really wanted to meet this guy," she explains to Sunday Mainichi.
He turned out to be around age 40, with a wife and children. Once inside the hotel room, his veneer of gentility promptly vanished when he opened a valise and brandished a variety of devices whose purpose clearly marked him as a connoisseur of sadomasochism. To Mizuho's growing horror, he snapped a dog collar around her neck and screeched, "Get down on your hands and knees, b***h, and start crawling!!"
"I was too scared to call for help," she says of her unexpected experience at humiliation. "I thought if I resisted, he'd kill me for sure."
Mizuho's case may have been somewhat extreme, but it's by no means rare for such encounters to end in grief. The National Police Agency recently announced that during the first half of 2002, reported crimes involving the various voice phone and e-mail encounter services -- referred to in Japanese as deai-kei saito -- soared 2.6-fold over the same period last year to reach 793 cases.
Among the complaints were 23 rapes and 33 incidences of criminal intimidation. Nearly 80 percent of the cases involved minors; about half involved juvenile prostitution.
While women are far more likely than men to fall victim to a crime, such encounters also take a heavy toll on males, both in terms of wrecked family lives and depleted bank accounts.
One man, hopelessly addicted to casting his net in search of a sweet young thing, was running up monthly bills as high as 140,000 yen on his cell phone. When his increasingly suspicious wife finally sneaked a peek at his incoming mail log, she saw the names were all female.
Interviewed by Sunday Mainichi via e-mail, Maya, 22, says she turned to encounter sites out of dissatisfaction with the prospects among males at her company.
"I'd like to think that somewhere, there's a Mr. Right who will fit my needs to a T," she says. "But the only way to find him is to expand the chances for meetings."
Despite the growing number of troubles reported by the media, there's no evidence that women are eschewing the encounter sites. Take Mizuho, who admits to having bedded five males whom she met via the airwaves.
Did the nervous, superficial conversation and frantic one-night stands that followed give her any real relief?
"When we embraced, at least I felt there was something real about their warmth," she says. "I never got to know anything about them. But when we left the hotel and went our separate ways, I always felt this indescribable sense of sadness."
Not even her harrowing dog-collar performance was enough to induce Mizuho to pull the plug on cyber romance.
"I'm lonely. So, so lonely," she sniffles. "There's just no end to it."