I’m the person who asked a question about three posts ago.

papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) has a lower barrier to entry than working at a cabaret club. You don’t have fixed shifts, and there aren’t set expenses like outfit costs, hair styling, or whatever common-area fees the club charges. Some people probably get into papa-katsu simply because they want to make money easily. But while the naming sense of a certain club may have helped papa-katsu become so widespread, it also seems to reflect the broader backdrop of an increasingly impoverished Japanese society. Public support for universities has declined, tuition has risen under the principle that beneficiaries should bear the cost, parents have become less financially secure, and universities have adopted survival strategies in response to the declining birthrate—essentially pushing students to buy degrees that are no longer suited to the times by taking on debt in the form of student loans. Graduating from university doesn’t guarantee a good income. At so-called F-rank universities, it’s difficult to get returns that justify the investment of four years and all that tuition. On the other hand, even among graduates of the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, or Keio—especially the typical liberal-arts “elites” from law or economics who are merely skilled at navigating internal rituals and office politics—you find nothing but obsolete old fossils who contribute not even an inch to GDP. I think this is what happens when people—including university students—get caught up in a major turning point in society.

Even women who only started putting themselves out there in college are registering with dating clubs. When women in their twenties say “back in the day,” I wonder when they mean（笑）. For at least the past ten years, I’ve often seen female college students not just working at hostess clubs, but also doing delivery health services and paid drinking parties. I wasn’t using dating clubs ten years ago, so this is only what I’ve heard, but apparently there were plenty of female college students in the 1980s “Yūgure-zoku” scene and mistress banks as well. If it became a social issue in the early ’80s, it must have already been happening since the ’70s. So I’d say things have been this way for half a century. This was even before the IRA carried out the bombing at Harrods. That’s a long time ago.