Ann Folkman, a managing director at CarVal, said there were sound reasons to do business in the hotels. “While leisure hotels may sound salacious, they are a legitimate and longstanding industry that caters to the privacy needs of young Japanese adults, who frequently live with their parents or in company-provided housing,” Ms. Folkman wrote in an e-mail. “As with many of the hotels we have invested in across the world, the investment strategy was to run a compliant business, create sufficient scale and operational regularity and then exit to a buyer who could see the value of the business.”

CarVal’s exit came shortly after 3 p.m. on Thursday, when groups of men who said they were affiliated with Kato Pleasure made a coordinated sweep of the hotels, forcing out the staff, emptying hotel rooms of frightened guests, putting up makeshift fences and changing the locks in preparation to install Kato’s own management and workers.

Takashi Hayashi, the chief executive of Urban Resorts, a unit of Alchemy contracted to run the hotels’ daily operations, who has refused to leave Hotel Shine, seemed shaken as he spoke to a reporter through a tall fence on Saturday. He was flanked by two men who he said worked for Kato Pleasure, who refused to speak to a reporter. Around the compound, six workers were putting the finishing touches on barricades at the hotel’s entrances.

“I’m fine,” Mr. Hayashi said. “I have no intention of leaving.”

Ms. Folkman said CarVal had no involvement in the hotel sweeps. She suggested that Alchemy, which was hired in 2008 to manage the hotels, had encouraged the employees to remain to attract publicity. “We believe Alchemy’s dissatisfaction with the sale is motivating their behavior,” she said, “and we believe many of the claims they are making to The New York Times and others are wholly without merit.” She said that Alchemy was trying to protect its own business and that it had demanded 300 million yen ($3.9 million) to leave the hotels. The demand, she said, was “without any legal basis.” Alchemy, she said, has tried to disrupt the sale because it would like to buy the hotels.

Mr. Mijatovic countered that Alchemy’s agreement with CarVal had two years remaining and that his company had sought the money to make up for fees lost because of the early termination.

CarVal, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Cargill in 2006 and now has $9 billion under management, was one of the first American companies to buy portfolios of bad loans and distressed properties after Japan’s real estate collapse in 1990. Since then, investors ranging from Goldman Sachs to smaller vulture funds have paid fire-sale prices for properties.