Courtney Love has opened up about being “trafficked” by the Yakuza when she was a teenager and being forced to strip, saying that it actually was a “really good” experience — though she admitted to having privilege as an American in Japan.
The Hole singer spoke about the apparently “delightful” time in her life while discussing her origin story on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast
“I like to tell people I was from a trailer park, and I was just a goth,” Love said, in response to Corgan’s admission that he attempted to dig into her past after becoming “smitten” with her. “It’s too complicated otherwise — all the class stuff.”
Continuing, Love insisted that the “lowest points” in her life actually weren’t that bad. “Juvie was a delightful experience. I’m not even kidding,” she said. “Getting trafficked by the Yakuza to Japan? Delightful. I’m not even kidding.”
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“I understand [with] Japan it’s because I was American and nobody would fuck with me, but I really was trafficked by the Yakuza out of Portland with all these other girls from Idaho, Utah, and Washington State,” she said. “I don’t know what happened — because they took my passport — but after five months, I went to the Japanese embassy, not the American one.”
Love added that she knew “at that point it would generate press — it was called ‘slavery’ then — and I was like, if I go to [the Japanese], they’re more discreet. They put me on a first-class flight back to Portland — high-rolling — and I had my Hondo guitar and the Yamaha.”
“So, the stuff people think was the ‘good stuff’ was horrible, and the stuff people think is the ‘bad stuff’ was really good,” Love concluded.
Love previously gave more detail about the experience during an episode of the BBC’s 2024 podcast Courtney Love’s Women, saying,
“A bunch of us got trafficked — like 20-something girls got trafficked by the Yakuza to Japan to strip. There was a guy — I think his name was Roger, and he ended up in the FBI’s Most Wanted — he was the guy down there, like, preying on us.”
“It was girls from Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. I remember being in economy class with about 25 ‘gaijin’ girls, and we were all underage. And we don’t even know each other, going through Narita Airport with no luggage, and they’re looking the other way. It’s ’81.”
“So I spent about six months, and when I was over it — and I didn’t even ask for my passport back, I just went to the Japanese embassy, and they bumped me up to business class and got the hell out of there. It was pretty great. I mostly had to strip to that Foreigner song ‘Urgent’ with the really bad sax solo.”
“Every 10 days, I’d be moved to another theater in the outskirts of Tokyo. I took to it like a duck to water, though. I don’t mind being naked on stage. I mean, I had a blast. And I do realize that that is because I had an American passport and American privilege, but I had a blast. I don’t know that everybody else did.
Watch the full podcast below. The segment begins around the 1:09 mark.
Elsewhere in the episode, Love and Corgan bonded over their mutual disdain for Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon. During the conversation, Love confirmed that her late husband Kurt Cobain wrote lyrics to Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” that were inspired by Gordon.
Love also urged Cobain’s former bandmate Dave Grohl to “man up” and “just say we’re cool.”
