K abukicho is not known as “sleepless town” for nothing. The bustling centre of Tokyo’s night-time economy is a magnet for tourists and locals in search of a bite to eat, a few drinks and a karaoke session. But behind its famous neon entrance lies a darker side: backstreets populated by women offering sex in exchange for money.

Tokyo has an established fuzoku commercial sex industry that revolves around regulated establishments catering to an array of peccadilloes, from “soapland” bathhouses to “pink salons”.

But since Covid-19 restrictions were eased three years ago, a new phenomenon, fuelled in part by the boom in international tourism, has emerged: women who solicit on the street, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and sexually transmitted infections .

It is hard to gauge how many women work the streets of Kabukicho, but last year police arrested 112 women on suspicion of soliciting near a notorious Kabukicho park.

The rise in tachinbo – Japanese slang for “standing around” – has heightened concern that…