OSAKA -- A 37-year-old Japanese man was arrested Monday on suspicion of paying for sex with a 14-year-old Vietnamese girl in Cambodia, marking the first time a domestic law banning sex with children has been applied to an offense committed abroad, police said.
Takeshi Ozawa, a resident of Kasugai, Aichi Prefecture, has admitted to paying the girl $550 for a week's worth of services and having sex with her from Dec. 30, 2000, to Jan. 4 at a hotel in Phnom Penh, despite knowing she was a minor, police said.
They said the act was discovered after hotel employees informed local police.
Ozawa, who was a company employee residing in Osaka at the time, was taken into custody in Cambodia but released on bail during preliminary hearings.
He returned to Japan in June, before his trial concluded, and the National Police Agency contacted Osaka police, which opened an investigation into the matter, they said.
Ozawa was quoted as telling police that he was introduced to the girl via a local broker. He said he visited the Southeast Asian country at least four times to purchase sex with children.
Japanese police have applied the new prostitution law to pornography involving children abroad but had never made an arrest in connection with paid sex.
The law banning people from buying sex from those aged under 18, which went into effect Nov. 1, 1999, allows Japanese police to arrest suspects even if the acts took place abroad.
If found guilty, offenders face a maximum of three years in prison.