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Prostitution in Japan has a long and varied history. While the Anti-Prostitution Law of 1956 made organised prostitution illegal, various loopholes, liberal interpretations of the law and loose enforcement have allowed the sex industry to prosper and earn an estimated 2.5 trillion yen a year.
Terms
Many terms have been and are used for the sex industry in Japan. (See "Types" below)
Baishun (売春) , literally "selling spring" or "selling youth", has turned from a mere euphemism into a legal term used in, for instance, the name of the 1956 Anti-Prostitution Law (Baishun-b"shi-h" - 売春防�法); the modern meaning of the word is quite specific and is usually only used for actual (i.e., illegal) prostitution.
Mizu sh"bai (水商売), the "water trade", is a wider term that covers the entire entertainment industry, including the legitimate, the illegal, and the borderline. Fūzoku (風俗) , lit. "public morals", is commonly used to refer specifically to the sex industry, although in legal use this covers also e.g. dance halls and gambling and the more specific term seifūzoku (性風俗), "sexual morals", is used instead.
History
Shinto does not regard sex as a taboo, while the impact of Buddhist teachings regarding sex has been limited.
Shogunate era
In 1617, the Tokugawa Shogunate issued an order restricting prostitution to certain areas located on the outskirts of cities. The three most famous were Yoshiwara in Edo (present-day Tokyo), Shinmachi in Osaka, and Shimabara in Kyoto.
Prostitutes and courtesans were licensed as yūjo( "�女), "women of pleasure", and ranked according to an elaborate hierarchy, with oiran and later tayū at the apex. The districts were walled and guarded to ensure both taxation and access control. Ronin, masterless samurai, were not allowed in and neither were the prostitutes let out, except once a year to see the sakura cherry blossoms and/or to visit dying relatives.
Meiji era
The Opening of Japan and the subsequent flood of Western influences into Japan brought about a series of changes. Japanese novelists, notably Higuchi Ichiyo, started to draw attention to the confinement and squalid existence of the lower-class prostitutes in the red-light districts. In 1908, Ministry of Home Affairs Ordinance No. 16 penalized unregulated prostitution.
Escaping poverty in their own land, many Japanese women, known as Karayuki-san ("行"?"�ん) (lit. "Ms. Gone-to-China/Korea"), worked (or were sold) as prostitutes into Southeast Asia (especially Singapore and the Philippines), Siberia, Hawaii, Australia, and even some parts of India and Africa. Many of these women are said to have originated from the Amakusa Islands of Kumamoto Prefecture, which had a large and long-stigmatized Japanese Christian community.
The recent surge in the number of Asian women who go to Japan to work in the sex industry has resulted in the neologism Japayuki being coined on the model of the older Karayuki, who traveled in the opposite direction.
War era
- Main article: Comfort women
During World War II, the Japanese military procured prostitutes for its soldiers in China. Some were Japanese, but the majority were obtained from other countries occupied by Japan. Many if not most of these so-called "comfort women" were tricked or coerced into service. The women were kept until they contracted diseases and then discarded. They received minimal or no compensation, and many survivors are still seeking compensation in Japanese courts.
Postwar
After the war, SCAP abolished the licensed prostitution system in 1946. In 1947, Imperial Ordinance No. 9 punished persons for enticing women to act as prostitutes, but prostitution itself remained legal. Only the Anti-Prostitution Law of 1956 (No. 118, passed May 24, 1956)-reportedly spurred by alarming rates of Sexually transmitted diseases among troops-made organised prostitution illegal.
Legal status
The Anti-Prostitution Law of 1956 did not make practicing prostitution illegal. It did prohibit the following: soliciting for purposes of prostitution, procuring a person for prostitution, coercing a person into prostitution, receiving compensation from the prostitution of others, inducing a person to be a prostitute by paying an "advance", concluding a contract for making a person a prostitute, furnishing a place for prostitution, engaging in the business of making a person a prostitute, and the furnishing of funds for prostitution. [1]
However, the definition of prostitution is strictly limited to coitus. This means sale of numerous sex acts such as oral sex, anal sex, and other non-coital sex acts are all legal. The Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Law of 1948 amended in 1985 and 1999, regulates these businesses.
Types
The sex industry in Japan uses a variety of names.
Delivery Health
Delivery health (デリ"リーヘルス, Deribarii herusu?), also known as shutch" health (出張ヘルス) or by the abbreviation "deriheru" (デリヘル), is a form of prostitution in Japan similar to fashion health, the difference being that the brothel has no premises and is essentially a call girl or escort service with women being dispatched to their customers' homes or to hotels.
Enjo kosai
Main article: Enjo kosai
Enjo k"sai ("�助交際, Enjo kosai), defined literally as supported dating but often used as a euphemism for prostitution,[1] is a practice in Japan where high school-age girls are paid by older men to accompany them on dates and sometimes to render sexual services.[2] Most observers, especially overseas, regard it as a form of child prostitution, although it need not involve sexual activities. However, most customers do expect and attempt sexual relations.
Fashion health shops
Fashion-health massage (ファッションヘルス, fasshonherusu), or health for short, is a form of Japanese brothel that manages to avoid the anti-prostitution law by offering a range of services that stop short of vaginal intercourse.
Hostess Bar
While some bars are tied to the sex trade, with hostesses being little more than prostitutes who serve drinks, at most establishments the sex is generally implied, not performed. Hostesses light cigarettes, pour drinks, offer flirtatious conversation, and sing karaoke in an effort to keep the customers entertained. They are distinguished from strip clubs in that there is no dancing or nudity.
Image clubs
- Main article: Image Club
An image club (イメージクラブ, imējikurabu?), or imekura (イメクラ, imekura?), are a type of brothel in Japan similar to fashion health parlors. They differ in that image clubs are themed along popular sexual fantasies such as an office, a doctor's surgery, a classroom, or a train carriage. The prostitutes themselves, whose activities are usually limited to oral sex, wear exaggerated costumes appropriate to the setting and the desire of the customer. (see Cosplay).
Outcall call girl businesses distribute advertising handouts to home and apartment mailboxes, telephone booths, restrooms and the like in big cities in Japan. Dimensions of these glossy paper ads vary from 7 cm W x 10 cm H (3 in by 4 in), to 8 cm W x 12 cm H (3¼ in by 4¾ in). Call girls operate via delivery health services. Freelancers can get in contact with potential customers via telekura (telephone clubs), and the actual act of prostitution is legally fudged by terming it as enjo k"sai or "compensated dating".
No-pan kissa
No-pan kissa (ノーパン喫茶, literally "no-panties cafe") is a Japanese term for cafes where the waitresses wear short skirts with no underwear. The floors, or sections of the floor, are often mirrored.
Customers order drinks and snacks and may look at, but not generally touch, the staff. The shops otherwise looked like normal coffee shops, rather than sex establishments, although they charged around four times as much for coffee (typically 700 Yen for a coffee). Previously most sex establishments had been establishments such as Soaplands and Pink salons with professional prostitutes. No-pan kissa were a popular employment choice amongst some women because they paid well and generally required little sexual contact with the customers. Many employees were college students who were earning extra money.
The first one to open was in 1978, called Johnny (after Johnny Guitar), opened by Tsuchida Yuichi in Kyoto. After this they began to open in Osaka and then in Higashi-Nagasaki in Tokyo. Initially all of them were in remote areas outside the traditional entertainment districts. Within a year large numbers had opened in many more places such as major railway stations.
In the peak of the boom in these shops in the 1980s, when many started to have topless or bottomless waitresses. However at this point the number started to decline rapidly.
A later development in certain no-pan kissa was the creation of small private rooms where the staff provided sexual services like oral sex or masturbation.
Eventually such coffee shops gave way to fashion health clubs, and few, if any, remain. The New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act came into force on February 13, 1985, which further restricted the sex industry, and protected the more traditional businesses.
In addition to no-pan kissa, there have also been no-pan shabu shabu, and no-pan yakiniku restaurants.
Oiran
Oiran (花", Oiran) were high-class courtesans in Japan. The word Oiran consists of two kanji, 花 meaning "flower", and " meaning "leader" or "first." Cultural aspects of oiran traditions continue to be preserved to this day.
The Oiran arose in the Edo period, 1600 - 1868, at a time when laws were passed restricting brothels to walled districts set some distance from the city center. In the major cities these were the Shimabara in Kyoto, the Shimmachi in Osaka, and in Edo (present-day Tokyo), the Yoshiwara. These rapidly grew into large, self-contained "Pleasure Quarters" offering all manner of entertainments. Within, a courtesan's birth rank held no distinction but there arose a strict hierarchy according to beauty, character, educational attainments and artistic skills. Among the oiran, the tayū (太夫, tayū) was considered the highest rank of courtesan or prostitute, and were considered suitable for the daimyo. Only the wealthiest and highest ranking could hope to patronise them.
To entertain their clients, oiran practiced the arts of dance, music, poetry and calligraphy, and an educated wit was considered essential to sophisticated conversation.
Onsen geisha
Onsen Geisha (温泉芸者) is a negative term synonymous with prostitute. They are prostitutes who work in the resort towns in Japan, such as Atami, and market themselves as geisha. In Atami, the official registry office regards long-time, proven geisha separate from those who have not yet completed their
Pink salon
A pink salon (ピンクサ�ン, pinkusaron?), or pinsaro (ピンサ�, pinsaro?) for short, is a type of brothel in Japan which specialises in oral sex. A pink salon is unusual in that the service is offered in small booths within a large open-plan room.
Soapland bath houses
Soaplands bath houses are where customers are soaped up and serviced by staff.
Tayū
Tayū (太夫, tayū) was considered the highest rank of courtesan or prostitute (See Oiran above)
Telekura
In the original incarnation of the telephone club, popular in the mid-1990s, a male client would pay a fee to enter a booth with a phone. The phone would then ring with calls from women willing to go on a date - the implicit understanding being that this would lead to paid sex. These clubs have been outlawed as fronts for prostitution in some jurisdictions in Japan.
In modern telephone clubs, members pay a fee, after which they are supplied with the mobile phone numbers of women who sign up voluntarily to the sites. The caller then may arrange a meeting with a girl. Participants in the practice of enjo k"sai are thought to make use of this service.
See also [ JapaSex ]
Further reading
- Associated Press. "Women turn to selling sexual favors in Japan". Taipei Times, December 9, 2002, p. 11. [2]
- Bornoff, Nicholas. Pink Samurai: Love, Marriage and Sex in Contemporary Japan. New York: Pocket Books, 1991. ISBN 0-671-74265-5.
- Clements, Steven Langhorne. Tokyo Pink Guide. Tokyo: Yenbooks, 1993. ISBN 0-8048-1915-7.
- Constantine, Peter. Japan's Sex Trade: A Journey Through Japan's Erotic Subcultures. Tokyo: Yenbooks, 1993. ISBN 4-900737-00-3.
- French, Howard W. "Japan's Red Light 'Scouts' and Their Gullible Discoveries". The New York Times. November 15, 2001. [3]
- Japan The Trafficking of Women http://www.paralumun.com/issuesjapan.htm
- Kamiyama, Masuo. "The day Japan's red lights flickered out". MSN-Mainichi Daily News. [February 25, 2006.
- Kattoulas, Velisarios. "Human Trafficking: Bright Lights, Brutal Life". Far East Economic Review. August 3, [2000.
- MSN-Mainichi Daily News. "Ambiguous attitudes vex kiddy sex laws". MSN-Mainichi Daily News. December 20, 2001. *</column>
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