This has to be the wildest and most jaw dropping story about what some people call ‘honey traps’ that I have ever read and because I don’t want you to miss a word, I am doing something I rarely do. I am attaching the full article written by Richard Lloyd Parry in the Times Online and published on May 10th of this year. Your comments would be so welcome and I will write my own comments tomorrow.

Want to dump a troublesome husband, or unsuitable boyfriend? Just call Osamu Tomiya and his team of splitter-uppers, but you’ll have to move to Japan.

Until the unexpected phone call comes and she learns the breathtaking truth, Rika Suzuki will remember it as a night of fun and excitement in a cheerless and humdrum life. It began with an invitation from a young female friend, Kaori, whom she’d met by chance a few weeks earlier. A group of friends were going out for the evening and, unexpectedly, Rika — 40, and unhappily married — was invited to join them.

They met in one of Tokyo’s smartest restaurants; the beer and saké flowed. Kaori’s friends were flatteringly interested in her, none more so than a man of her own age named Osamu Ota, a successful businessman with a droll and confident charm. When the bar at which they ended up closed for the night, it was Osamu who suggested that they all take a room in an hotel so that the party could continue. And as the others said their goodbyes several hours later, it was he and Rika (not her real name) who were left behind.

The photographs taken the morning after tell the story of what happened next: the discarded clothes and screwed up tissues and Rika, looking bashful but happy, sitting among the churned up sheets of the hotel bed. “These are her earrings on the bedside table, and that’s her belt,” says Ota, who is showing me the photographs. “And these . . . bodily liquids on the sheet — well, these are the proof of what happened.”

In other circumstances, this would be unsavoury, but predictable, sexual bragging. But Rika was the victim, not of a straightforward womaniser, but something more chilling: a meticulously planned professional sting operation.

Everyone involved in that wild evening — from the young “friend” who invited her, to the guests in the restaurant — was an actor, an employee of an agency that specialises in sexual entrapment. The chance meeting with “Kaori” weeks before, the dinner invitation and the act of seduction were commissioned and paid for by someone Rika has never met — the lover of her husband, a woman who yearns for the failure of Rika’s marriage.

The whole thing was masterminded by Mr “Ota” — real name Osamu Tomiya — a member of a peculiarly Japanese profession, part-private investigator, part-prostitute, known as wakaresase-ya — the “splitter-uppers”.

The function of the wakaresase-ya is the direct opposite of a dating agency: with great ingenuity, and the right fee, they will prise apart human relationships. Do you have a troublesome ex-boyfriend who won’t leave you alone? A beloved son who is getting engaged to an unsuitable girl? A dead-loss employee who refuses to take the hint and retire? All of these difficult situations can be resolved by the splitter-uppers.

The broken-hearted ex will be visited by the girl’s “new boyfriend”, a muscular gangster-type who explains why he would be wise to nurse his broken heart alone. The undesirable daughter-in-law-to-be will be lured into a drunken one-night stand with a handsome and mysterious man who appears from nowhere — photographs of their tryst will find their way to her fiancé. The stubborn employee will find himself confronted with evidence of gambling debts, or nights in massage parlours — and resign to avoid embarrassment. In each case, the dirty work — of threatening, seducing and investigating — has been done by a splitter-upper.

But most common of all are complications surrounding marriages. In Japan, the idea of a “no-fault” divorce has never caught on and when a marriage breaks down, it is helpful to be morally in the right. When it comes to maintenance, division of common property and custody of children, the betrayed partner is at a great advantage over the betrayer. And this is where the splitter-uppers come in.

For a wife who wants shot of her husband, it would be disastrous just to own up to a long-term lover and throw herself on the mercy of the courts. Instead, she hires someone such as Mr Tomiya, a 40-year-old former sushi chef, to set up the honeytrap that will put her husband in the wrong and enable her to go before the judge as the injured party, with photographs to prove it.

“It all comes from the desire to own something for yourself,” says Mr Tomiya, a surprisingly ordinary looking Casanova, with a wispy moustache. “Some people want to own a watch or a house, in the same way a woman wants to own her boyfriend or her husband, own him for herself. You ask clients what they want and they say, ‘I want to be happy’. Our job is to sell happiness to our clients — dreams and happiness.”

It doesn’t always work out that way. Earlier this year, the shady world of the wakaresase-ya was exposed in a bizarre murder case. A married man named Takeshi Kuwabara was sentenced to 17 years in prison for the murder of his 32-year-old lover, Rie Isohata. Kuwabara was a splitter-upper hired by Isohata’s husband, who wanted to divorce her but keep custody of their five-year-old son. Having successfully seduced her and accomplished his mission, Kuwabara fell in love with the woman. When the truth came out, she broke off the love affair in disgust and he strangled her with a piece of household string.

The case has cast a chill over the industry; of the 270 estimated wakaresase-ya in Japan, Mr Tomiya was one of few willing to speak to a journalist. After abandoning his career as a fish slicer in 1992, he spent a few years as a conventional private detective, but quickly identified a gap in the market.

He began to offer a new service: having identified the husband’s mistress, he would then set about breaking up her relationship with his client’s husband. Mr Tomiya claims his company, Global National Corporation (GNC), now has 50 full-time staff, plus 100 part-timers. They are aged between 18 and 60 and include students, housewives and retired people. “We look for people who are motivated, versatile, gentlemanly or ladylike, people with common sense and imagination,” he says.

Among his most “versatile” agents are a handful of porn actors and actresses. Depending on their skills and performance, they are paid £2,100 to £6,900 a month. Of GNC’s clients, three out of five are women; four out of five are ordinary working people, which is surprising given the cost of a splitting-up operation. The simplest job, such as seeing off a stalker, might be wrapped up for £3,500. But a set-up such as the one used to trap Rika will cost at least double that — plus a bonus of about the same amount for Mr Tomiya’s personal participation.

“We produce a drama at the request of our clients,” he says. “We write the script and put on the play. For a member of my staff, it could take a year to make someone fall in love. If it’s me, I can do it in a day. In this industry, I’m a god.”

Since the murder, there have been anxious calls for regulation of the industry — but none of what GNC does is obviously illegal. Even if it was, how many of its victims would be prepared to go public with their complaints? Not Rika, you suspect, whose humiliation has been complete. It began when Mr Tomiya was approached by a woman whom Rika has never heard of — the woman who is sleeping with her husband. She had come without his knowledge to end the marriage and Mr Tomiya knew how to do it.

His first step was to send “Kaori’ along. She approached Rika in the street and they agreed to meet for lunch where an “old friend” of Kaori’s happened along — Mr Tomiya, aka Ota. The attractive people at the restaurant were all agents, including Mr Tomiya’s wife — a partner in the business. After Rika went to the hotel bathroom, he photographed the strewn clothes and stained sheets and collected the tissues — for DNA testing, if needed.

The dossier of photographs has been prepared and Rika’s fate now lies in the mistress-client’s hands. “It may be that I’ll visit the husband, and tell him what happened,” he says. “Or I’ll go to her and persuade her to divorce him.” The mistress will have her man, the husband will have his mistress and the moral high ground — and Mr Tomiya will have millions of yen. Only Rika, middle-aged, childless, without a career or means of support, will have nothing.

“Life consulting — that’s what this job is,” Mr Tomiya says. “When people have no one to listen to their problems, then they end up committing suicide or resorting to murder. But by paying a certain amount to have their problems solved — well, that’s good for everyone. That’s why I’m proud of my job.”

So what do you think of that?

Till tomorrow,

Love Francine