Between the Nights: Scouts Missing in Kabukicho, 2003-2010

Between the Nights: Scouts Missing in Kabukicho, 2003-2010

In the early 2000s, Kabukicho was a town where violence and anxiety swirled behind the glamor. Neon lights shone brightly on the main street, and host clubs and cabarets lined the streets, but in the shadows were swarms of intermediaries known as "scouts. They were the ones who approached young women who had come to Tokyo from the provinces or regional cities and led them into the world of night work, and they worked in the dark like the bloodstream of the city.

At first glance, the scouts appeared to be frivolous pick-up artists, but in reality they were closely connected to the underground economy. Since 2003, when the police crackdown and the "Kabukicho Cleanup Operation" began, the shadow of the gangs has been cast thickly behind the adult entertainment business, and the scouting business has become one of the sources of funding for the organizations. While they disguised their work as introducing cabaret and sex workers to stores on the surface, in reality they were embedded at the end of the system of "turning women into merchandise.

The "missing scout" was one of those who were swallowed up in this chain of events. One day, he disappears without a trace, having called out to people on the street, laughing and telling them about his dreams. His friends nonchalantly remark, "It's a town where everyone disappears. No one is surprised, no one tries to look for him. That was the norm in Kabukicho at the time.

In fact, in the mid-2000s, there was a string of troubles involving scouts, and in 2007 the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department tightened its enforcement of the "Scout Regulation Ordinance (to strengthen prevention of violation of the Employment Security Law and human trafficking). Nevertheless, the underground pimping structure survived in a different form and came to life again through smartphones and SNS.

No one knows why he disappeared. But his absence indicates the reality that individuals are easily swallowed up by the city. Scouting is not just a profession, but an obscure labor that exists at the lowest level of the city, where success brings money and failure endangers lives. The economy of the city of night was built on such wear and tear.

Scouts still stand on the streets of Kabukicho, calling out to women with the same smiling faces. But what they see is not a dream, but the reality of survival. The darkness spreading beneath the neon is quieter than it once was, but deeper. Someone disappears and someone appears. That cycle is the breath of this city.