A man under arrest for threatening a woman who wouldn’t join his harem has admitted to the allegations, police said.
Hirohito Shibuya, who claims to be a fortune-teller, invited a 20-year-old woman to live with him and some 10 other women sometime around November last year.
When she refused the offer, Shibuya, 57, allegedly told her, “You will be in danger if you tell anyone that I invited you.”
Since being arrested on Jan. 26, Shibuya has talked with officers about his communal life with the women.
“With several women living with me, my income rose and my life became stable,” police quoted Shibuya, from the Tokyo suburb of Higashiyamato, as saying.
Police have seized books on hypnotism and fortune telling from his home. Shibuya told officers that he had bought the books in a bid to study how to attract women to his harem.
He forced the women he lived with to work as shop assistants to make money for their communal life, police said.