Japan – a country of neon lights and intricate talents, a country of smiling faces and latest high-tech gadgets. But behind all that lies an ugly reality of sex trafficking, sex tourism, sexual exploitation, nation’s addiction to pornography, and attitude that everything goes for the purposes of pleasuring men.

The sex industry in Japan is a multi-billion dollar industry, which generates 1% of Japan’s GNP and is equal to the country’s defense budget. Sex industry is socially accepted and majority of male population either engage in commercial sex in any shape or form or are involved one way or another, whether legal or illegal, including politicians and police. If there are any laws concerning sexual exploitation of women and children, they are not clearly defined or enforced. In the country, where more that 150,000 women and children are trafficked in and forced into prostitution every year, the number of victims who are indentified is under a hundred, and even less are helped and restored. In a country where over 60% of parents want pornographic industry regulated, the corrupted government officials choose to look the other way. Japanese men are obsessed with having sexual contact with minors. Japan is the largest producer of child pornography. Men have an easy access to school age girls through “compensated dating” phone clubs. 12 million Japanese men travel to Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and other Asian countries on organized sex tours to purchase sex with children as young as 12 and 13. Although legal age of consent is 18 in Japan, according to the 2010 TIP report, no child sex tourist has been prosecuted since 2005. Overall, Japan’s attitude towards sex industry is shocking and thought provoking.

Japan offers a unique opportunity for human trafficking criminals to support Japanese men’s practice of purchasing sexual services. It is called “entertainer visa.” Kevin Bales describes in his book, Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves, that the “visa is supposedly given to singers and dancers who will be giving performances in theatres and nightclubs” but “[i]n reality, an increasing torrent of young women is being brought to Japan to be forced into prostitution.” The amount of issued entertainer visas has almost doubled since 1996 and continues to grow. Apparently, Japanese are such art enthusiasts that over 130,000 of women entering the country on the entertainer visa each year are not enough to meet the demand for entertainment and performance. Red flags should be coming up, but the government is just choosing to look another way.

Another way that women are smuggled into the country is through fraudulent marriages. Kevin Bales wrote that the number of marriages of Japanese women to foreign men has not changed significantly over the years, while “marriages of foreign women to Japanese men have skyrocketed to more than 30,000 a year.” Many suspect that a lot of these marriages are fraudulent and are “arranged by traffickers and used to move foreign women into the Japanese sex trade.” Again, red flags should be coming up, and again, the government is choosing to look another way.

Women and children are trafficked in to Japan mostly from East and Southeast Asian countries, and some report that there are also women from Eastern Europe, Russia, North, South and Latin American countries. But it is not only foreign women and children that are being trafficked in and around the country. Japanese women and girls are being enslaved and trafficked domestically for the purpose of sex exploitation as well. The 2010 Trafficking In Persons report says that women and children are blackmailed and indebted through credit card debts and “other debts from loan sharks.”

Another phenomenon in Japanese sex industry that is just astonishing is called “compensated dating” or “supportive relationship,” depending on translation. One source reports that a quarter of Japanese schoolgirls between ages of 12 and 15 engaged in prostitution through moderated telephone clubs. Kevin Bales also depicted the practice in his book, writing “Using their cell phones, girls would log on to a Web site where they could register to receive a phone call directly from a man. A “date” would be arranged that could be as innocent as sharing a snack or could include sex.” The girls used the money to pay for their cell phones and to buy expensive clothes. While a major scandal broke out in 1990s that exposed the practice after one girl “was beaten, sodomized, and infected with a sexually transmitted disease on a compensated date,” very little has changed. In spite of laws and regulations passed to end the practice, ban of advertising of the phone clubs near schools, and awareness campaigns in schools, compensated dating is still taking place. Japanese men are eager to purchase sexual services from naïve young teenage girls who do not completely comprehend what is going on. And while in the United States a man can be imprisoned for engaging in similar practice, the Japanese government and law enforcement are closing their eyes to this issue also.

Needless to say, child pornography is legal in Japan. In 1998, Japan was the largest producer of child pornography in the world. While 90% of complaints about sex industry in Tokyo request ban on sexual exploitation of children, Japanese Parliament refused to prohibit production of child pornography for “business reasons” in 1998. That brings us to another issue – Japanese men are the largest clients of sex tourism in Asia. Each year, 12 million of Japanese men travel to Cambodia, Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Australia, and many other places on organized and pre-arranged tours that include purchasing sexual services with local women and children, some as young as 12. Sex tourism grew dramatically from 1970s to 1990s, and the U.S. State Department 2010 TIP report still classifies Japanese men as “a significant source of demand for child sex tourism in Southeast Asia.”

Kevin Bales writes that “Japan clearly has a serious problem with <sexual> slavery, and it is a problem that is being insistently ignored.” The United States State Department placed Japan in Tier 2 ranking of countries in their efforts to fight human trafficking in annual Trafficking In Persons report in 2010. Tier 2 describes countries that “do not fully comply with the TVPA’s <the Trafficking Victims Protection Act> minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.” This ranking is clearly misplaced because even the State Department itself reported that in year 2009 Japan had the lowest number of indentified trafficking victims and prosecuted trafficking criminals, “while there was no empirical evidence of a decline in Japan’s trafficking problem.” There were five (!) individuals who were prosecuted and convicted for the crimes of trafficking in persons, although, there was no information on sentencing. In the past, sentences for human trafficking were suspended. Additionally, only seventeen victims of human trafficking were identified in 2009, and it is not clear if they received any assistance or support from Japanese authorities. The fact that every year, hundreds of trafficked Thai women seek assistance from Thai Embassy in Japan to return back to their home, clearly speaks that Japanese government’s efforts to fight human trafficking are pretty much non-existent. It has even been reported that policemen sell the women who escaped sexual slavery back to their traffickers. The government of Japan did not make any attempts to “reduce the demand for commercial sex acts or the demand for child sex tourism” in 2009, according to 2010 TIP report. Additionally, Japan has not joined the global community to fight human trafficking – the country is yet to sign the UN Trafficking In Persons Protocol. Therefore, the Tier 2 ranking for Japan clearly has no ground.

In the fight to end human trafficking Japan is obviously behind in spite of its status as a developed country. If anything, Japan is more a contributor to the demand to enslave and sexually exploit women and children all over the world. Behind the bright lights and smiles is a disgusting picture of how low men can go to satisfy their sexual desires. There needs to be additional international pressure on Japanese government to enforce laws and regulations and to adequately prosecute those involved in human trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children.


Sources Used:

Kevin Bales. Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves.

2010 Trafficking In Persons report by US State Department.

Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation <http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/japan.htm>