When Kenichiro Hokamura's kidneys failed, he waited more than four years for a transplant before going online to look into rumours of organs for sale.
As a native of Japan, where less than 10 kidney transplants are performed a year, the 62-year-old businessman was desperate. 'There are 100 people waiting in this prefecture alone and there were just three operations performed here last year. I would have died before getting a donor.'
Still, he was astonished at how easy it was. Ten days after contacting a Japanese broker in China last month, he was lying on an operating table in a Shanghai hospital receiving a new kidney. A doctor had only examined him that morning. 'It was so fast I was scared,' he said.
The 'donor' was an executed man, the price 6.8 million yen ($465,300). 'It was cheap [in comparison to the cost of my life],' said a recovering Mr Hokamura, now back in Kyushu in southern Japan where he runs a construction-related business. 'I can always earn more money.'
Mr Hokamura is one of hundreds of well-off Japanese who have gone to China for kidney, liver and other transplants, drawn by the availability of cheap, healthy organs and improving medical facilities along the east coast of the mainland. The trade is also attracting a growing number of Koreans and other foreign nationals.
There is no attempt to conceal the origins of the organs, the bulk of which come from prison morgues. 'My translator told me my donor was a young executed prisoner,' said Mr Hokamura. 'The donor was able to provide a contribution to society, so what's wrong with that?'
