A Care Worker’s Mission to Address Sexuality and Disability in Japan

From SPA! vis Yahoo! Japan

September 5 2026

TOKYO – Hana, a woman in her 30s who provides home-visit care to people with disabilities (@kgw206012793791), has another side to her work. She is also the owner of Love Suketto, a dispatch-style adult service exclusively for people with disabilities.

Because she had no previous experience in the industry, Hana first worked as a driver for a dispatch-style adult service and then as a provider before opening her own business. Why was she so determined to confront the issue of sexuality among people with disabilities?

The Shocking Reality She Discovered While Working in Care

Hana had always enjoyed working in the welfare and care field. After giving birth, she began working as a home helper specializing in people with disabilities. One day, she happened to see a television feature about sexual assistance for people with disabilities, and it shocked her.

“There was no conversation or smiling. The person was wearing gloves and carrying it out matter-of-factly, almost like a routine task. The scene was so striking that I couldn’t get it out of my head.”

Isn’t part of the appeal of sexual intimacy the chance to enjoy something out of the ordinary—talking freely about subjects that are normally difficult to discuss, experiencing physical contact, and so on? Yet the sexual assistance shown in the program seemed extraordinarily impersonal and cold.

Feeling that something was wrong, Hana asked a client with a severe physical disability a straightforward question: “How do you deal with your sexual needs?”

“The answer I got was shocking: ‘You just have to endure it.’ … I felt that simply because someone has a disability, sexuality is treated as something taboo.”

Entering the “Nightlife Industry” With No Prior Experience

Hana began thinking that she wanted to somehow address the sexual issues faced by people with disabilities. She then took a bold step. Wanting first to understand how the industry worked, she entered the adult-services world herself.

However, she had no experience in the sex industry and was afraid at first, so she began by working as a driver for a dispatch-style adult service.

“I had imagined it as a world full of aggressive, intimidating people like you see on television. But when I actually worked there, I found that many of the providers were perfectly ordinary housewives. I realized that you really can’t understand something until you experience it yourself.”

After working as a driver, she became a provider herself. Her initial goal was to learn about the industry’s standard services and customer-service practices at a business serving non-disabled customers.

“There were good people and bad people, and I experienced a lot of both good and difficult things. I learned firsthand that providers can be emotionally and physically worn down if they don’t choose their working environment and customers carefully.”

At the time, whenever she felt she was reaching her limit emotionally, Hana would take extended breaks to rest both mentally and physically. This experience later proved useful when she established her own business, particularly in protecting the mental and physical well-being of her providers.

The Words of Gratitude From an Elderly Customer

In 2021, Hana launched a mobile, dispatch-style adult service exclusively for people with disabilities, without operating a physical storefront. What she discovered was that far more people than she had imagined were struggling because they were unable to satisfy a fundamental human desire: sexual desire.

Many people with disabilities live with their families. As a result, for businesses providing adult services to people with disabilities, one major hurdle is getting family members to understand and accept their use of the service. Preliminary discussions do not always proceed smoothly.

“Even non-disabled people rarely tell their families about their sexual concerns or their use of adult services, right? It’s the same for people with disabilities. There are many people who find it difficult to use such services because they cannot obtain their family’s consent or feel too embarrassed to talk about it with their caregiver.”

The pricing structure is the same as that of ordinary establishments. During a session, the thing Hana pays the most attention to is using the initial conversation to learn about the customer’s disability, the difficulties they experience, and what they would like to do.

“That’s because I want to accommodate their wishes as much as possible. For example, if someone cannot change the angle of their neck and cannot look downward, but says they would like to see what is being done to them, we have used two computers or smartphones to conduct a video call.”

Among the requests she has received, one of the most memorable was the time she spent with an elderly man, C, who was about to be hospitalized for an extended period. C lived far away, and in a few days he was scheduled to enter long-term hospitalization, after which he would never be able to return home.

“He contacted us saying, ‘This will be the first and last time I use a service like this in my life.’ He told me happily that he had given up hope, but that his caregiver had found our business for him.”

When he told her, “Once I’m hospitalized, I’ll never be able to come home again, so thank you, truly,” Hana says she felt from the bottom of her heart that starting the business had been worthwhile.

“I Want Them to Feel Safe Receiving the Service”

Continuing to operate an adult service specializing in people with disabilities also requires considerable emotional resilience. The pressure can be particularly intense when a customer’s condition suddenly changes.

“Because we have to understand each individual’s particular disability and respond appropriately within just a few minutes of meeting them, there are many difficult situations. That’s precisely why the preliminary consultation is so important.”

Hana’s business has providers with backgrounds in social welfare, as well as people qualified as nurses and care workers. Her aim is for customers to feel safe receiving sexual services because the provider coming to them has the necessary knowledge and experience.

“That’s why it’s difficult to recruit providers. At our business, we only hire people who share our philosophy. We currently have 12 providers. In particular, I feel that we receive very few applications from people in their 20s. I hope that more people will gradually learn about initiatives like ours, and that we can create a society in which one of the three fundamental human desires can be fulfilled as naturally as any other.”

At present, people with disabilities often find it difficult to obtain understanding from their families and those around them when using adult services, and there are few people willing to support them. In addition, establishing adult services for women with disabilities carries significant risks. Consequently, even at a time when adult services for women without disabilities are attracting attention, it remains difficult to offer concrete solutions to the problems faced by people with disabilities themselves.

There may be many struggles surrounding sexuality and disability that people cannot recognize unless they themselves experience them.

Hana’s story of how she came to establish her business may help bring those struggles to light.

Interview and writing by Shuka Furukawa @yunc24291