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TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese Buddhist priest who was arrested on suspicion of having paid sex with a teenage girl said he was under stress and had given in to lust.

Itsushi Ehara, 73, chief priest at a temple in the western Japanese prefecture of Hiroshima and also head of a nursery school, paid the 15-year-old girl 80,000 yen ($675) to have sex in a hotel in downtown Tokyo, a police spokesman said on Friday.

"I could not resist my lust. A lot of stress built up from running the school," Ehara was quoted by Kyodo news agency as telling police.

Ehara, who is believed to have met the girl through a prostitute-dispatch service, is also suspected of having paid for sex with several other teenage girls over a period of two to three years, Kyodo quoted police as saying.

Japan has long had a relatively lax attitude toward sexual exploitation of young people. Teenage prostitution -- known as "compensated dating" -- was outlawed in 1999, but it still goes on, though less openly than before.