Japan Considers Crackdown on Sex Trafficking

Monica’s life as a Tokyo prostitute was her own choice. Like thousands of others over the last two decades, she took what she thought was a good offer of lucrative work in Japan’s multibillion-dollar sex industry.

But the Colombian woman had no idea what awaits foreign prostitutes in Japan: debt bondage, sometimes violent working conditions, “fines” imposed by pimps or brothel owners for any attempt to escape -- and an utter lack of help from authorities.

“The reality is different once you arrive. It’s much harder than you ever imagined,” said Monica, 31, a single mother who still works the Tokyo streets. She spoke on condition that she be identified only by her first name.

The thousands of cases like Monica’s are at the center of a new crackdown on human trafficking in Japan after the country’s placement on a U.S. watch list last year. Japan was again cited for trafficking in a U.S. human-rights report in February.

Affluence and a lack of laws against sex trafficking have combined to make Japan one of the world’s top destinations for women like Monica.

In the popular imagination, human trafficking involves women who are kidnapped or otherwise tricked into working as prostitutes. But experts say such cases are rare in Japan. More common are women who come voluntarily, but find themselves caught in slave-like conditions upon arrival.

“The Japanese human-trafficking problem is the sex industry,” said Kazuo Inoue, an opposition Democratic Party lawmaker and anti-trafficking activist who says the crackdown also needs to address the root cause -- demand stoked by loosely regulated red-light districts.

Tokyo is moving to clean up its act. The government is expected to pass a law by summer to make trafficking of foreign victims into Japan a criminal offense for the first time. Authorities also have tightened visa requirements for “entertainers,” a category that is suspected of providing legal cover for foreign sex workers.

“We are in the process of drawing up the necessary measures to effectively battle this,” said Masaru Sakamoto, from the Cabinet office overseeing the government’s anti-trafficking plan. “I think once those are in place, the fruits of our efforts will become more evident.”

Critics, however, are waiting to see if Japan is serious about protecting victims. Japan has long treated women like Monica as accomplices to the traffickers who bring them here, deserving of few rights as sex workers and illegal migrants.

A mother at age 13, Monica was struggling to survive in a poor, violent barrio of Bogota more than a decade ago when she was approached by a broker with the offer of sex work in Japan, something that would pay enough to buy her daughter a better future in Colombia.

“No one comes because they want to do this work. But we choose to because there’s no better option” in Japan or back in Colombia, said the petite redhead, dressed modestly during a late-night interview at a cafe near one of Tokyo’s busiest red-light districts.

Arriving in 1993 at age 20, Monica was slapped with a debt of $48,000 -- much larger than she had been led to believe -- and warned of reprisals against her family if she tried to escape. Minor infringements, including illness, can inflate that debt, she says, and women suffer a brutal physical toll in serving dozens of customers a week, with no days off, to get rid of the debt.

She was able to repay her debt in several months, since Japan’s economy was stronger then, and now works on her own. She says women who come these days aren’t as lucky, with some finding themselves in bondage for more than a year amid ever-increasing fines for various infringements.

Statistics on women trafficked here are hard to get. Activists estimate that more than 1 million may have come since the early 1980s. The International Organization for Migration in Switzerland calculates that Japan’s sex industry has about 150,000 foreign workers today.

The Philippines, Colombia and Thailand are the top sources, according to the International Labor Organization’s Japan office, although anecdotal evidence on the street points to a surging number of Russians, Koreans and Chinese as well.

The sex industry has long been treated with leniency in Japan: Red-light districts have openly thrived from the patronage of legitimate businesses.

Critics have repeatedly alleged ties between traffickers and law enforcement, from immigration officers taking bribes to allow prostitutes into the country on fake passports, to police who return escaped, abused sex workers to their captors. Those allegations are denied by the National Police Agency.

Kinsey Alden Dinan, a Columbia University researcher, said the Japanese government did little to safeguard sex workers’ rights and well-being or ensure that they had ways to quit.

“When there’s clearly a demand for these people to work in your country, you have an obligation to work out a system that they can do it in legally and safely,” she said, charging that for Japanese officials, “it’s easier to deport them than to deal with them.”

Sakamoto of the Cabinet office said the government’s anti-trafficking plan would include some counseling for prostitutes and plans to postpone immediate deportation to encourage victims to testify and cooperate with authorities.

But it’s expected that only a few women will qualify since the government does not recognize those who have willingly entered the country for unauthorized labor as victims, regardless of what happens to them.

“I don’t see a clear plan to protect and support victims,” said Yoko Yoshida, a lawyer and director of the Japan Network Against Trafficking in Persons. She said there was a need for medical attention, legal advice and job training for victims.

Japan’s wealth has long drawn the hopeful, and many believe that turning them away could prove difficult.

“Entertainment” visas, intended for musicians, dancers and other entertainers, are issued to 80,000 Filipina women each year. Critics contend that the visas are a cover for sex trafficking, saying most women who get the visas end up working illegally as strippers, hostesses and prostitutes.

In March, Japan tightened visa requirements, which was expected to dramatically reduce the number it issues.

Yet that plan threatens the flow of $400 million sent home each year by Filipinos working in Japan, and the Philippine government has urged leniency for its citizens already working here with entertainment visas.

Chaturont Chaiyakam, a consular official at the Thai Embassy in Tokyo, estimates that of 15,000 illegal Thai migrants in Japan, 6,000 are in prostitution.

He said it is not unusual for those sent home to Thailand to be smuggled back into Japan. “There is still demand, so people want to come,” he said.