Fire Kills 15 at Japanese Adult Video Parlour

Police in Japan have arrested an unemployed man on suspicion of murdering 15 people who died in a blaze at an adult video parlor in the western city of Osaka early this morning.

Ten other people were injured, four of them critically, when the fire broke out at Cats, an all-night video shop with private viewing cubicles, shortly before 3am, reports said.

Firefighters said all of the victims were men and appeared to have died from carbon monoxide poisoning or inhalation burns.

Kazuhiro Ogawa, a local man, told police he had started the fire by setting light to a newspaper in one of the rooms, the Kyodo news agency said.Ogawa, 46, initially claimed he had been smoking in his room before falling asleep, but later admitted starting the fire deliberately because he was "fed up with life".

Investigators said 26 of the shop's 32 rooms were occupied at the time of the blaze, which took 120 firefighters an hour and a half to put out.

The shop charges 500 yen (£2.60) an hour or 1,500 yen for 11 hours from 11pm for a room equipped with a reclining chair, TV and DVD player, as well as access to a large selection of mainly pornographic films and comics.

Customers who managed to flee the building said the shop was not fitted with smoke alarms, emergency lights or exits, and that they received no evacuation directions from the three members of staff.

One survivor, a 37-year-old man who had been sleeping there after missing his last train, said he was lucky to be alive. "The layout is so complicated that people visiting for the first time would have found it difficult to escape," he told Kyodo.

The high death toll has promoted renewed concerns about lax safety standards in Japan's huge adult entertainment industry.

In 2001, a suspected arson attack at a building in Tokyo's seedy Kabukicho district killed 44 people in the worst fire disaster in Japanese postwar history.

The victims included 12 women in their 20s who worked at Super Loose, a pub where customers were served drinks by women dressed in school uniforms.

An investigation found that the building had no fire doors or smoke control system, and that the emergency stairs were blocked.

In July this year five men, including the building's owner, were given suspended prison sentences after being found guilty of professional negligence.

Despite a police crackdown on commercial sex establishments in big cities, the number of stores offering pornography and cheap accommodation has soared in recent years.

They are particularly popular with inebriated salary men who have missed their last train and need somewhere to sleep. For a fraction of the price of a hotel room, many also provide showers, cheap food and drink, and permit smoking.