Lucie Blackman case shocked nation and caused an international media sensation

(First published on April 13, 2022)

Fourth in a five-part series

TOKYO — The world of the 90-day hostesses was not commonly known to most ordinary Japanese citizens. But that all changed when a young English hostess named Lucie Blackman, working in Tokyo, suddenly disappeared and the subsequent investigation and media coverage exposed this aspect of Tokyo night life's dark underbelly.

Lucie Blackman was a bright, attractive 20-year old from a middle class family in England. A flight attendant with British Airways who had flown the London-Moscow route, she found such work low paying and dull and had quit the airline in the summer of 2000 to come to Tokyo, where she had heard there was a fortune to be made for English-speaking Caucasian blond women like her in Tokyo's clubs. It was her plan to spend three months there, then return home to her family in England to start thinking seriously about her future.