Kaoru Aoyama
Introduction
In Japan, as in many parts of the world, the sex industry is regulated by the law. The aim of such regulation can be summarised as being to protect ‘good public morals’, in particular to protect women and young people from being exposed to commercial sexual activities, at the same time as making ‘adult entertainment’ hygienic and ‘healthy’. Thus, the law bans and criminalises certain activities in the industry. In this chapter I will argue that the law, however, does not protect those who are working in the sex industry as workers entitled to have safe and fair working conditions. Instead, it treats them as criminal offenders or delinquents, or perhaps victims of circumstances, who need to be rehabilitated into good public morals. These central actors in the industry are thus, in effect, made invisible in the legal discourse and unable to assert their rights as workers or amend wrongs done to them.
There is a multi-layered bias regarding gender and sexuality. Regulation is centred on men with the ‘right’ sexuality who are capable of using healthy adult entertainment without being ostracised from good public morals, whereas women are divided into bad women and good women depending on whether they are involved in the sex industry or not. There have always been those who supported prostitutes and other women in the sex industry as workers inevitably involved in gendered occupations in a male-centred society. There is also, however, a persistent argument in the women’s movement that the industry should not exist because it is a machinery for the reproduction of gender inequality and the violation of women’s personhood and dignity (Sugita 1999: 74-76, 80, 170-71; Tsunoda 2001: 138-39). No matter how well-meaning the people who argue against the existence of the sex industry are, their attitudes do not have a positive effect on those seeking practical help. Women in trouble working in the industry will not seek help from those who want to rescue them by making them quit sex work. The view that the sex industry should not exist has unwittingly upheld the construction of a legal framework which works to hide what actually happens in the sex industry from the public eye and leads to more danger for those who work there. In addition, the recent anti-trafficking discourse, particularly in relation to sex work, divides women into rescuers/advantaged/Japanese and victims/disadvantaged/foreign. This discourse does not recognise that the migrant women (and men) may be working in this industry of their own free will, and that what is needed is improved working conditions.
I argue that the above issues are becoming more exaggerated and that some workers are becoming even more vulnerable under globalisation, including the destabilising effects on the whole working population and the anti-trafficking discourse which has come with it. I will map out the Japanese laws regarding the sex industry and sex work; how they emerged and were interpreted during the post-Second World War era; and how they have become more stringent in recent years. I will argue that this has primarily affected sex workers in negative ways. (I use the term sex work to cover all forms of sexual services for payment, with or without physical contact or intercourse, while I use the term prostitution in the sense used in the Prostitution Prevention Law as outlined below.) I will also explain how the political economy of gender and sexuality centred on the norm of the middle-class family and the gendered division of labour separates sex workers from the ‘good’ public in Japan. I will explore changes in the trends of sex work along with social and economic changes which are altering these norms in reality if not in values. Finally, I will pay special attention to a relatively new and perhaps most vulnerable group involved in the global sex industry, migrant sex workers. I hope that this analysis of the actual effects, as opposed to the proclaimed intentions of the legal and discursive situation of the sex industry in Japan will enable a new vision of policy which can work to benefit those who are most vulnerable.