Osaka Court Convicts Head of Scout Group 'Torasu' for Steering Three Women Into Sex Work in Three Cities

The Verdict

The Osaka District Court on July 29, 2026 convicted the head of a street-recruiting operation that supplied women to sex-industry establishments in three cities, and then let him walk out of the courthouse.

Ren Konami, 29, the representative of the scout group known as "Torasu," was sentenced to two years and six months' imprisonment, suspended for three years, on a charge of violating the Employment Security Act (shokugyō antei-hō) — the statute that bars referring or placing people into "harmful work." Prosecutors had sought two years and six months. The court imposed exactly that term and then suspended it. The verdict was reported by MBS News.

According to the judgment, Konami conspired in 2024 with scouts belonging to his group to introduce three women in their twenties to sex-industry establishments in Sapporo, Nagoya and Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, and to have them taken on as workers.

He had admitted the charges.

The court's assessment was blunt on the conduct and lenient on the man. The offense was "an organized crime carried out habitually," the bench said, with "no circumstances in the motive or background deserving of consideration" and "a high degree of malice." As the group's representative, it added, "his responsibility is great." Against that, the court cited his admission of guilt and his remorse.

The Business

Torasu recruited on foot.

The group worked the entertainment districts of Osaka, and also operated in Tokyo's nightlife quarters, according to prosecutors and to Osaka Prefectural Police accounts published at the arrest stage by the Sankei Shimbun, Kyodo News and ABC News. Its method was the oldest one in the trade: approach women on the street, and steer the ones who engage toward a sex establishment that will pay for the introduction.

That payment is the "scout-back" — a referral kickback a sex-entertainment business pays for each worker delivered to its roster, often calculated as a running cut of what she earns rather than a one-time fee. Police estimate Torasu, a group of roughly ten people, took in more than ¥100 million through scout-backs and similar payments over about a year and a half.

When investigators searched premises tied to the group in February, they seized something that has become a recurring artifact in these cases: a manual setting out how to approach women — what to say, and how.

The referrals in the charged case did not stay in Osaka. The three women went to establishments in Sapporo, in Nagoya, and in Hamamatsu — a distribution pattern consistent with what Japanese police have described across the scouting sector, in which groups recruiting in one metropolitan district place workers into shops in regional cities that depend on outside referrals to keep their rosters filled.

Konami was arrested on February 4, 2026, along with three other men. Police listed him as having no stated occupation, with an address in the Toyosaki area of Osaka's Kita Ward. The dispositions of the other three men have not been reported in the coverage reviewed for this article.

Why the Employment Security Act

The charge here is not a prostitution offense. It is a labor-law offense.

The Employment Security Act prohibits recruiting for, referring to, or placing a person into work that is harmful to public health or morals. Japanese prosecutors have applied that provision to the act of steering a woman into commercial sex, and over the past two years it has become the principal instrument for prosecuting scout groups — because it attaches to the referral itself rather than to the sale of sex or to the licensing of the shop.

That distinction matters. The Anti-Prostitution Act (baishun bōshi-hō) reaches the transaction and the provision of a place for it. The Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Act (fuei-hō) reaches the operator. Neither reaches cleanly to the man on the sidewalk who decides which woman goes to which shop, and takes a percentage for the rest of her working life there.

Japan has since built a second tool for exactly that: the revised fuei-hō, which outlaws the scout-back payment itself. But that reform took effect in 2025, and the conduct in this case dates to 2024. The scout-back money that police describe as Torasu's revenue is therefore, in this prosecution, context rather than a count — evidence of the enterprise's scale, offered alongside a charge built on three referrals.

A Sector Under Sustained Attack

The Torasu case sits inside the largest enforcement campaign Japan has mounted against sex-industry recruitment.

Osaka Prefectural Police have moved repeatedly against scouting operations working the city's entertainment districts. Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department has spent 2026 dismantling "Natural," described by investigators as the country's largest illegal scout organization, and arrested a Toshima Ward man in July whom the trade called the "legendary scout of Kabukicho." Prefectural public-safety commissions have begun using the administrative side of the revised fuei-hō, suspending shops that paid scout-backs.

What the July 29 verdict adds is a data point on outcome. The courts are convicting; they are largely not imprisoning. A defendant who admits the charge, at the head of an operation the same court called organized, habitual and highly malicious, received a term he will not serve unless he offends again within three years.

What Remains Open

The judgment covers three women. Police estimated the group's proceeds at more than ¥100 million over roughly eighteen months — a figure that implies a volume of referrals far beyond the three that were charged, and that has not been tested in court. Whether prosecutors pursue further counts, and what becomes of the three men arrested alongside Konami, has not been reported.

The manual seized in February is the detail worth holding onto. It is documentary proof that this was not opportunism on a street corner but a trained procedure, written down and handed to about ten people, with a revenue model attached. The court said as much when it called the crime organized and habitual. It then suspended the sentence.

This article is compiled from July 29, 2026 reporting by MBS News on the Osaka District Court's verdict against the representative of the scout group "Torasu." Details of the February 4, 2026 arrest — the group's size and areas of operation, the seized approach manual, the estimated proceeds, and the July–November 2024 referral allegations — are drawn from Osaka Prefectural Police accounts as published by the Sankei Shimbun, Kyodo News (distributed via regional papers) and ABC News. Background on the revised Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Act and the wider scout-group enforcement campaign is drawn from National Police Agency material and this site's prior reporting. The defendant is named as Japanese reporting names him; the surname reading (Konami) follows the furigana given by the Sankei Shimbun. This is a trial-court judgment; no appeal had been reported at the time of writing. Legal glosses: shokugyō antei-hō = Employment Security Act, which bars recruiting for or referring people into work harmful to public health or morals; baishun bōshi-hō = Anti-Prostitution Act; fuei-hō = Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Act; "scout-back" = a referral kickback paid by a sex-entertainment business to a scout for introducing a worker.