Police in Japan have arrested a 70-year-old man over claims he arranged sexual encounters among senior citizens through newspaper adverts soliciting "tea-drinking companions", police and press reports said Tuesday.

Kiyohide Kuroda had allegedly been posting classified ads in a Tokyo newspaper for around a decade before he was taken into custody last week.

Press reports said Kuroda had helped arrange sex among about 1,000 men and 350 women, mostly in their mid sixties, earning some 30 million yen ($310,000) as commission in breach of Japanese prostitution laws.

His small ads for his "San Ai" (Three Loves) club offered to arrange meetings for "tea-drinking companions aged between 40 and mature ages," the reports said.

The oldest male customer was 88 and the oldest woman was 82.

A spokesman for Tokyo Metropolitan Police said Kuroda's arrest on Friday came after he separately introduced two women to two men who had asked him over the past month to find sexual partners.

"I recruited tea-drinking companions as I did not wish to give the impression that mine was sex business," Kuroda reportedly told investigators. "I thought people seeking prostitution understood what it meant."