Tokyo publishes the 風俗 business counts that public debate usually skips

A recent public discussion of Japan’s sex industry made a familiar contradiction feel sharper. Japan is often described as socially conservative, yet adult-business infrastructure is visible, normalized in some male social settings, and embedded in the urban fabric of places like Tokyo.

At the same time, the current public debate often focuses on the most visible edge of the issue: street prostitution, foreign clients, and public disorder. That leaves a narrower data question: when police regulate indoor adult-business categories, do they also publish the annual business counts?

The page that started this scan was the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s public list of 風俗営業等 business categories. It is not hidden or especially moralized. It reads like a bureaucratic interface: categories, procedures, forms, notices, and operating constraints.

Official pages about 風俗 can look more informative than they are. A procedure page proves that the administrative category exists and that police handle filings. A downloadable form tells you what an applicant must submit. Guidance pages may list 店舗型性風俗特殊営業, 無店舗型性風俗特殊営業, 映像送信型性風俗特殊営業, or 店舗型電話異性紹介営業 in detail.

That does not mean the page reports how many businesses are registered, permitted, or filed in a given year. Enforcement statistics and operator/business count statistics answer different questions. A table saying there were cases under 風営適正化法 describes police activity. It does not reveal the administrative base underneath it.

For this scan, the key public-data question was simple: which official sources publish annual counts such as 営業所数, 許可数, or 届出数, broken down by category and jurisdiction?

Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department publishes annual statistics that go beyond a procedure page. In the R6 statistics packet, the benchmark source is 第１６ 風俗営業等の状況（業態別及び年次別）, published as ktb016.pdf from the MPD statistics page.

That table gives the kind of administrative count of operators and businesses that makes category-level analysis possible. It includes 風俗営業, 性風俗関連特殊営業, 店舗型性風俗特殊営業, 個室付浴場業, 無店舗型性風俗特殊営業, 派遣型ファッションヘルス営業, and related lines.

These are not estimates of the total sex industry. They are not a count of all paid sexual activity. They are administrative counts under 風営適正化法 and related police categories. Depending on the line, they are closer to 営業所数, 許可数, or 届出数. Anything informal, illegal, misclassified, hidden, or outside the regulated frame will not be captured cleanly.

But for public-data work, the table is still valuable. It gives a visible base layer. It shows the administrative shape of the industry that the police themselves recognize and count.

Osaka is the obvious comparison. It is large, urban, culturally central, and impossible to ignore in a serious city comparison. It also publishes official material around 風営適正化法 procedures and enforcement statistics.

What I did not find in the checked public sources was Osaka’s equivalent of Tokyo’s ktb016 table: a public annual 風俗営業等の現況 or 風俗営業等の状況 table of operator/business counts with granular category counts.

The careful conclusion is not that Tokyo has some multiple of Osaka’s industry. The careful conclusion is that Tokyo and Osaka expose different layers of the administrative record to the public.

After Tokyo and Osaka, I widened the scan across major urban jurisdictions: Aichi/Nagoya, Kanagawa/Yokohama, Hokkaido/Sapporo, Fukuoka, Hyogo/Kobe, Chiba, Saitama, Kyoto, Miyagi/Sendai, and Hiroshima.

The pattern held. Some places publish useful procedure pages. Some publish category definitions, application documents, guidance, or enforcement statistics. What this pass did not find was a Tokyo-style public annual table of operator/business counts in most of the checked entry points.

Tokyo is the strongest public source found so far for granular 風俗営業等 operator/business count data. Its annual tables expose categories that make further analysis possible.

Osaka and Aichi/Nagoya are not empty cases. They have official public material, especially around procedures and enforcement. What they lack, in the checked sources, is a Tokyo-style public table of operator/business counts.

Missing public data should be described as a publication gap. It is not evidence that police or public safety commissions do not maintain the records internally. The question is whether the public gets a table.

For a country that documents so much, that gap is its own finding. The question is not only what the government knows. It is what the public can see, verify, and reuse without guessing.

The next step is not to force a national conclusion from incomplete data. It is to make the source map better. A proper 47-prefecture matrix would track whether each scan checked the prefectural police site, public safety commission, prefectural statistical yearbook, relevant city yearbooks, NPA reports, older annual reports, and archived PDFs.

Each jurisdiction should get a tier, a source URL, and a note explaining whether the public source contains annual business counts, only enforcement, only procedures, or nothing useful.