Self-styled "sex helper" Shingo Sakatsume has lost count of the abuses he claims the media and the authorities have heaped on him.

At first, after graduating in sociology from the University of Tokyo and freelancing as a "listening-and-talking" person with the often-lonely elderly, he'd had no such problems.

But the "abuses" began when he tried to set up a nonprofit called White Hands in 2008 — perhaps predictably given that its purpose was to address, and manually attend to, the sexual needs of the physically disabled in their homes or residences. Because police permission is required to set up any such sex business in Japan, he found himself thrust into many far from amicable encounters with the boys in blue.