Japan has an image as a country that places great value on traditional culture and family. However, the ‘Land of the rising Sun’ is also known for a darker, kinkier’ side.

Someone can come across the most bizarre and provocative TV shows, with the sex industry a very lucrative business. One of the niche markets that the sex business is exploiting lately is teenage girls offering themselves to older men for ’walking dates’.

In 2014 the US State Department flagged the so-called ‘joshi-kosei osanpo’ dates (Japanese for ‘high school walking’) as fronts for commercial sex run by sophisticated criminal networks. Vice News investigated the new twisted ‘cutesy sex obsession’ in Japan.