A shocking new documentary brings to light a particular kind of sex trade happening in shinjuku ni-chome,where young, mostly straight boys are being paid to sleep with older men.
Boys for Sale is not a comfortable watch. From the documentary’s very first scene in which a former straight male sex worker reveals how he could bring himself to have sex with men (“Money makes you hard”) to the heartbreaking sentiment of one boy who has not yet turned 20 but states, “I don’t want to live a long life,” the shocking revelations stack themselves high from start to finish. The film, which documents the experiences of a group of young male urisen (rent boys) who live and work together in Shinjuku Ni-chome, not only exposes one of the darker sides of Tokyo’s famed gay district, but also unearths a plethora of related issues in the process.
“We could have made five different films,” says executive producer Ian Thomas Ash. “In the three years it took to produce, we did all kinds of filming, and there were so many things we could’ve focused on, for example gay rights in Japan or the fact that men having sex with men for money is not illegal in Japan, whereas female sex work is. But in the end, our original idea still felt like the strongest.”
This story is from the July 2017 edition of Tokyo Weekender.
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This story is from the July 2017 edition of Tokyo Weekender.
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