Social Science Japan Journal Vol. 9, No. 1, pp 33–50 2006
doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyl009
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Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex:
The Union of Militarism and Prohibitionism
FUJIME Yuki*
This essay examines the relationship between US policy toward commercialized sex, known as the ‘American
Plan’, and postwar Japan’s prohibitionism in the context of changes in the global management of commercialized
sex over the course of the 20th century, and reconsiders the meaning of prohibitionism for feminism. It draws on
the existing literature on prostitution from Japan and abroad, the publications of the International Abolitionist
Federation (IAF), and the records of local governments, among other sources. In the first section of this essay, it
examines the details of the American Plan, which constitutes the United States’s first clear institutionalization of
prohibitionism during World War I. In the following two sections, it turns to the influence of the American Plan
on the reorganization of the Japanese prostitution system during the Occupation era, and the participation of
Japanese feminists in that process. Finally, the essay concludes by problematizing the affinities between the system
of prostitution prevention and the US–Japan security alliance.
1. Introduction
Mainstream Japanese feminist approaches to prostitution have historically been prohibitionist— that
is, oriented toward prohibiting the sale of sexual services.1 And the conventional belief that prostitution is wrong and that there must be laws to prohibit it is widespread in society. In 2000, the United
Nations adopted a protocol on human trafficking as a supplement to the United Nations Convention
against Transnational Organized Crime, and in recent years, various Asian countries have enacted
laws to prevent trafficking in people. In Japan as well, many feminists have joined together to campaign for laws to prevent human trafficking, as distinct from the current Prostitution Prevention
Law. In contrast to women’s movements in other countries however, in Japan, criticism of the extant
laws that criminalize women’s sale of sexual services has been quite muted (Fujime 1995). Decriminalization has unjustly been equated with the institutionalization and legalization of prostitution and
has therefore tended to be rejected on that account. Firm adherence to prohibitionism has created a
tendency to endeavor to resolve this problem by strengthening state power to rein in prostitution
rather than by empowering women in the position of selling their sexual services. In practice, the
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FUJIME Yuki is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Studies at Osaka University of Foreign Languages. She is the author of Sei no Rekishigaku (The Historiography of Sex) (Fuji Shuppan, 1998). Most recently, she has
published ‘Nichibei Gunji Domei to Baishun Torishimari Chiho Jorei’ (The US–Japan Military Alliance and Local Prostitution Ordinances) in Ajia Gendai Joseishi Kenkyu 2 (2006). She can be reached at Department of International Studies, Osaka
University of Foreign Studies, Comparative Cultural Studies, 8-1-1 Aomadani-Higashi, Minoo-shi, Osaka-fu, 562-8558,
Japan, or by e-mail at [email protected].
*This article was translated from the Japanese by Suzanne O’Brien.
1. Translator’s note: The term ‘prostitution’ is employed here in a restricted sense to refer to the sale of sexual services rather
than their purchase, while the expression ‘commercialized sex’ refers to both the sale and the purchase of sexual services
collectively. This is a crucial distinction, as Fujime emphasizes that it is women’s sale of sex—not men’s purchase of it—
that has been the main focus of Japanese laws and women’s activism.
© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. All rights reserved.
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prevailing attitude is that those regarded as victims of human trafficking should not be punished,
while both the men and the women who are parties to prostitution should be punished.
The prohibitionist framework is also deeply entrenched in the narratives of women’s history. The
histories of the licensed prostitution system, the movement to abolish legal restrictions on prostitution, and the Prostitution Prevention Law have long been written from the perspective of prohibitionism. Particularly troubling in connection with the recent movement to establish laws prohibiting
human trafficking are current assessments of the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic
in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, a treaty adopted by the United
Nations prohibiting trafficking in people and exploitation of people for the purposes of prostitution
(hereafter 1949 Convention). In essence, this treaty does not prohibit prostitution; it prohibits
exploitation of another for the purpose of prostitution. This fact is unfortunately forgotten, and the
peculiar explanation that the limitations of the Prostitution Prevention Law arise from its conformance to the 1949 Convention is widely accepted (Yoneda 1997; Kyoto YWCA-APT 2001: 130–131,
152–153, 158–163).
In recent years, I have pursued research into the modern and contemporary history of the commercialized sex system and the social movements it gave rise to. In these works, I have been critical of the
conventional wisdom of women’s history that prevailed until the mid-1990s. In this essay, I focus on
prohibitionism to uncover the history of the intimate connections between militarism and prohibitionism that are concealed in narratives of women’s history permeated by the prohibitionist perspective,
and I explore the implications of those connections for Japanese feminism in the present. Historically,
prohibitionism, like the licensed prostitution system itself, was motivated by the imperative to protect
military personnel from sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), a fact that has heretofore been invisible. A
product of the modern abolition movement, the Prostitution Prevention Law fundamentally determined contemporary attitudes toward the issue of prostitution and is intimately intertwined with the
postwar US Occupation forces and the US–Japan military alliance. This essay draws on the existing literature on prostitution from Japan and abroad, the publications of the International Abolitionist Federation (IAF), and the records of local governments, among other sources. It examines the relationship
between US policy toward commercialized sex, known as the ‘American Plan’, and postwar Japan’s
prohibitionism in the context of changes in the global management of commercialized sex over the
course of the 20th century, and reconsiders the meaning of prohibitionism for feminism.
First, a word about the relevant secondary works: The works of Rosen (1982), Bristow (1996),
and Pivar (2003) do not specifically mention Japan, but they serve as important reference points for
thinking about the main features of the ‘American Plan’. As even a cursory glance at the list of works
relating to the US military’s sexual management or policies toward prostitution and sexual assault
demonstrates, this has been an area of rich research since the 1950s (Inomata 1953; Mizuno 1953;
Kanzaki 1954; Goto 1956; Duus 1979; Sugiyama 1988; Fujime 1997a, 1999a, 1999b, 2001b,
2003). There are also various works in English that take up this theme (Molasky 1999; Yoshimi
2002; Tanaka 2002). However, as these works do not consider the sexual management policies of
the US and Japan in the context of global society’s attitudes toward commercialized sex, they do not
broach such topics as the international aspects of the US’s sexual management policies, the contradictions between the 1949 Convention and the Prostitution Prevention Law, and the relationship
between US Occupation forces or US troops stationed in Japan on the one hand, and the regulations
to constrain the sale of sexual services and prevent prostitution on the other. Even in Fujino Yutaka’s
masterful 2001 work, these issues are not addressed.
In the first section of this essay, I examine the details of the American Plan, which constitutes the
US’s first clear institutionalization of prohibitionism during World War I. In the following two
Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex
35
sections, I turn to the influence of the American Plan on the reorganization of the Japanese prostitution system during the Occupation era and the participation of Japanese feminists in that process.
Finally, I problematize the affinities between the system of prostitution prevention and the US–Japan
security alliance.
2. The United States’s New Policy to Protect its Military Personnel:
The ‘American Plan’—Prohibitionism and Neo-Regulationism
The trend toward prohibitionism first took recognizable form in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the midst of rising militarism and ethnic cleansing around the world, the tenor of international anti-prostitution movements gradually began to change. Activists like Josephine Butler started
feminist movements advocating the abolition of prostitution in opposition to extant policies of state
control of female prostitutes. In response, purity crusaders poured their energies into campaigns
directed at the moral improvement of youths, the eradication of STDs, and the expulsion of female
prostitutes from society. In the midst of these trends, prohibitionism soon found its first clear articulation in law in the ‘American Plan’.
The American Plan had the same goals as the late 19th-century licensed prostitution system; it
merely attempted to reach those goals by different means. The modern licensed prostitution system,
which had as its fundamental principles the medical examination and registering of women who sold
sexual services, spread throughout European and American countries and cities as a result of the
experiences of the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars and the American Civil War. These countries
established in their colonies more elaborate systems of licensed prostitution than they had at home.
The imperative of protecting military personnel from STDs propelled the development of licensed
prostitution systems and their extension throughout the world.
By the turn of the 20th century, however, officials became aware that 19th-century methods of
control were not sufficiently effective in preventing the spread of STDs among the troops. Licensing
prostitutes had its limits, since vast numbers of troops contracted STDs from contact with unlicensed women. Medical advances such as the discovery of antiseptics and Salvarsan2 greatly
increased the opportunities for preventative measures by men as well as the treatment of STDs,
prompting changes in the content of policies toward prostitution and STDs. The US moved
swiftly to break away from the licensed prostitution systems that had become de riguer throughout
the world in the 19th century to protect its troops. Upon entry into the World War I, the US put
into practice a policy of protecting military personnel called the American Plan. This policy was
implemented nationwide with the cooperation of Allied governments and the civic organization
named the American Social Hygiene Association (Rosen 1982; Bristow 1996; Pivar 2003). This
plan was revived as the May Act during World War II and made a permanent law in the postwar
period. It is still in effect today.3
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2. Salvarsan was an arsenic-based compound used to treat syphilis before the discovery of penicillin.
3. In Article 13 of the 1917 Conscription Law, the Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force were empowered to ban the
sale of sex in areas surrounding military bases if those officials deemed it necessary for the readiness, health, and welfare of
the military. They could take whatever measures they thought necessary to suppress and prevent the sale of sexual services
and could expect the cooperation of the area’s local civilian officials. In 1941, this law was revived and put into effect
again. This law is known as the May Act. It is still in force today in the penal code under the title ‘The Sale of Sexual Services in the Vicinity of Army and Navy Bases’.
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Among the salient characteristics of the American Plan, first and foremost is the granting to military authorities the power to establish zones around military bases where the sale of sexual services is
prohibited. Often misunderstood is the fact that this provision does not make prostitution in general
illegal within these zones. Rather, it is women’s sale of their sexual services that was forbidden; purchase of those services by soldiers was not prohibited. From the early 20th century onward, the US
military, like those of various western countries, encouraged soldiers to use antiseptics, and this
became a common practice from the World War I through the World War II. The behavior that was
prohibited for soldiers was carelessly contracting an STD from having sex without using an antiseptic. They were not reprimanded for purchasing sex as long as they took preventative measures and
were even encouraged to do so.4
Another point that is easily misunderstood is that under the American Plan, what is established by
law is the right of commanders to establish zones in which the sale of sexual services is prohibited. If
commanders do not deem it necessary, they are not required to establish these zones. In fact, there
are hardly any instances of the rights given by the May Act being exercised domestically (Shimada
1998: 60). Yet, wherever the US military went overseas, it institutionalized the practice of directly
administering prostitution zones around its military bases all over the world (Tanaka 2002: 84–99).
In short, the setting up of zones where the sale of sexual services is prohibited was not a means of
restraining the behavior of military personnel; rather, it was a means of giving the military the right
to exercise power over women.
The second characteristic of the American Plan that concerns us here is that the coercion initially
applied to women within the limited spaces of the areas surrounding US military bases gradually
expanded throughout the entire region. Any woman suspected of engaging in prostitution was
forced to submit to a medical examination to check for STDs. Within the areas around the bases
where the sale of sex was prohibited, existing brothels and red light districts were shut down, but
new forms of prostitution in hotels, dance halls, and taxis quickly emerged. When Allied and local
governments realized that the sale of sex and the spread of STDs did not disappear despite the establishment of these zones, they made even greater efforts to apprehend suspected prostitutes. Under
the American Plan, vast numbers of women were arrested on the mere suspicion of prostitution and
were deprived of their civil rights. They were arrested on the arbitrary judgment of officials and
forced to undergo medical examinations. If they were found to be suffering from an STD, they were
taken into custody and forced to undergo treatment for their condition. It is reported that during
World War I, approximately 35,000 women were arrested. These were not just women who were
professional prostitutes but also a considerable number of women simply walking down the street or
running errands who were arrested on suspicion of prostitution (Bristow 1996: 119–125; Pivar
2003: 217). This sort of infringement of civil rights recurred during World War II. Hundreds of
women living in the neighborhoods surrounding military bases were rounded up and jailed as suspected prostitutes (Sherman 1995: 119–137).
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4. From before World War I until after World War II, the US military distributed antiseptics to prevent the spread of STDs
and provided antiseptics in the areas where prostitution took place. Even before World War I, feminists and social purity
campaigners repeatedly criticized these sorts of methods for actually instigating and encouraging the sale of sexual services
to young soldiers and sailors. Military personnel who contracted STDs were punished by having to attend training lectures and having their pay docked, but in 1944 it was acknowledged that these measures had no deterrent effect and were
abolished (Wincle and Kinsie 1971: 257).
Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex
37
In the most general terms, whereas 19th-century ‘regulationism’ confined a specific group of
women registered as prostitutes and required them to submit to regular medical examinations to
protect military personnel from STDs, the American Plan represents a novel form of ‘neo-regulationism’
under which it has become possible for officials to arrest arbitrarily any women suspected of being
prostitutes, to confine them, and to force them to submit to medical examinations. The IAF harshly
criticized the US military’s policy as a dangerous new form of regulationism that perpetuated the old
regulationism while institutionalizing at the state level a double standard for men and women in
regard to prostitution that was abusive to women. The IAF was founded by Josephine Butler with
the goal of abolishing state regulation of the sale of sexual services. Despite the fact that moral purity
campaigns and bans on prostitution were much more popular than ending state regulation (abolitionism) ever since trafficking in women and children became an international issue in the late 19th
century, the IAF never wavered in its opposition to the criminalization of prostitution (The Shield,
January 1916: 86, April 1916: 32–37, June 1917: 265–273, July 1918: 19–23, May–June 1919:
119–123, August–September 1919: 171–175, March–April 1920: 23–35). The IAF’s view of prostitution was diametrically opposed to the prohibitionism of groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, with its national chapters all over the world (The Shield, May–June 1919: 128–134,
December 1919–January 1920: 217–222). The trend toward prohibitionism was gathering strength
in American social purity campaigns before the outbreak of World War I but with the entry of the
US into the war, patriotic fervor engulfed the nation, and criticism of the government was muted.
There were, however, a few feminists who opposed the American Plan because it sacrificed women to
the needs of the military (Pivar: 212–225).
The IAF continued its opposition to regulationism, both old and new. The 1949 Convention
adopted by the UN was the culmination of the IAF’s fight to end state regulationism. From the
early 20th century through World War II, one comprehensive treaty to prohibit human trafficking for the purposes of prostitution was signed. In 1937, a proposed treaty to outlaw licensed
prostitution entirely was drafted and became the model for the 1949 Convention. With the outbreak of World War II, its adoption was postponed. After the war, the IAF became an nongovernmental organization (NGO) advisor to the UN and participated in the drafting of the new treaty.
The IAF resisted attempts by various countries advocating old or new regulationism to leave the
terms of the treaty ambiguous. During the drafting process, countries like the US intervened to
try to change the emphasis from a ‘ban on exploitation arising from prostitution’ to a ‘ban on
prostitution’. But the IAF harshly criticized such attempts as a blatant retreat from the 1937 draft
treaty and defended the principle of abolition of state regulation (The Shield, November 1948:
86–89, November 1949: 138, 182). The 1949 draft convention was introduced onto the floor of
the UN by America’s Eleanor Roosevelt, but in the end, America did not become a signatory to
the convention.
As outlined above, US policies toward commercialized sex were based on prohibitionism and neoregulationism, but the IAF’s abolitionism was obviously quite different. Japanese prohibitionism was
translated into new terms such as ‘eradicationism’ (zessho-shugi) and ‘the unlicensed system’ (hinin
seido). Prohibitionism succeeded abolitionism, a development that came to be explained as progress
toward an approach more advanced than abolitionism (Kubushiro 1936; Ito 1953), but the IAF
strongly criticized such policies as the American Plan as regulationism dressed up in new clothes. The
US rejected the abolitionism that culminated in the 1949 Convention, and, turning its back on the
world’s multitudes, adopted a unique form of prohibitionism (Wincle and Kinsey 1971: 9, 12).
However, it is worth noting that even in the US at such a moment, there did not exist a federal law
that prohibited prostitution in general. In federal law, there were only regulations that recognized
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the military’s authority to ban prostitution in limited areas around military bases, which had succeeded the American Plan.
3. The American Plan in Japan and the Cooperation of Women’s Groups
The US, which was in fact the sole occupation power in Japan in the wake of World War II, exercised
absolute authority over Japan’s postwar reforms, including the revamping of the regulation of prostitution. From the earliest days of the Occupation, the US military was very concerned about controlling STDs. On one hand, they set up facilities to provide disinfectants in the red light districts that
US military personnel frequented, while on the other they demanded that the Japanese government
control STDs among female prostitutes. In response to this command, the Japanese government
required treatment and hospitalization of people suffering from STDs, as well as notification of the
state by physicians who diagnosed them. ‘Persons liable to spread social diseases on account of their
profession’ were required to submit to medical examinations by local officials and to carry proof of
their health status. Furthermore, ‘the proprietors and managers of establishments in places liable to
contribute to the spread of diseases’ were required to establish facilities for the prevention of the
spread of STDs. In addition, the occupation forces, with the support of the Japanese government,
subjected the dancers, waitresses, and even administrative female employees of facilities for sexual
‘comfort’ (ian) to medical examinations for STDs. STDs, however, continued to spread through the
American military, and in 1946 the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA) facilities were
declared off-limits to American military personnel and closed down.
In 1946, the General Headquarters of the US Occupation forces (GHQ) issued an order abolishing the licensed prostitution system. On this basis, the Japanese government also abolished the regulations governing public prostitutes. GHQ and the Japanese government, however, declared the sale
of sexual services undertaken of one’s own free will to be legal and thus maintained the legal basis for
the existence of the licensed prostitution quarters. Accordingly, ‘licensed brothel districts’ (yukaku)
became ‘special restaurant streets’ or ‘red light districts’, and ‘prostitutes’ (shogi) became ‘hostesses’
(settaifu). Officially, the women working in these establishments ‘voluntarily’ received medical examinations from the STD Prevention Self-regulation Association (seibyo yobo jijitai). In fact, these districts were usually under the supervision of the police. Thus the postwar ‘abolition of prostitution’
was only the abolition of the extant regulations on prostitution; the system of licensed prostitution
continued on in a different form.
On the other hand, the Military Police (MP) of the occupation forces, with the cooperation of
Japanese authorities, began rounding up women on the streets as suspected prostitutes. Many of
these were housewives, students, and female workers who were forcibly arrested on ‘suspicion’ of
prostitution, then subjected to examinations and treatments for STDs. STD examinations were
imposed in a systematic way not only on women in the red light districts but also on those untested
‘suspected prostitutes’ who became targets of thoroughgoing efforts to uncover and eliminate them.
In August 1946, approximately 15,000 women were arrested nationwide on suspicion of prostitution (Fujime 1999c: 122–123). The American Plan was implemented on a much larger scale in occupied Japan than it was in the US.
In 1948, the Japanese government received a GHQ request to crackdown on prostitution, and it
submitted to the Diet the Prostitution Punishment Bill that would form the basis of the subsequent
Law to Prevent Prostitution (Fujino 2001: 184). At one time, Japanese women’s history portrayed
the process of establishing laws for the prevention of prostitution as a struggle between two opposing
forces: conservative male politicians who condoned prostitution and women’s groups fighting to
Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex
39
protect women’s human rights. So, the establishment of the 1956 regulations for the prevention of
prostitution was presented as the fruits of a movement that triumphed on account of women’s solidarity. In reality, however, it was the government itself, at the behest of GHQ, that sought to establish
laws outlawing prostitution, an effort that began with the 1948 bill.
The involvement of the occupation forces in the prostitution system is also clearly evident in the
process of establishment of local governments’ regulations concerning the control of prostitution.
Once the 1948 Prostitution Punishment Bill was defeated in the Diet, local governments one after
another adopted regulations prohibiting prostitution in their localities without waiting for a national
law. By 1955, 63 localities had adopted such regulations, and many of these localities were the sites
of American military bases. Miyashiro Prefecture was the first to adopt these regulations, followed by
Saitama Prefecture, Toyonaka City, Iwakuni City, Omisawamachi, and others. The official records of
the local assemblies in these localities detail the suggestions and interventions of the American military. Miyashiro Prefecture hosted the headquarters of the Ninth Army Group, which was in charge of
the occupation of all areas of Japan north of the Kanto region, and Miyashiro City was considered a
key city in the occupation of Japan. These regulations were established in accordance with the intentions of the US military, which considered the elimination of street prostitutes ‘the first step in expelling the sources of STDs and menial laborers’.
With the outbreak of the Korean War and the accompanying explosion of US soldiers buying sexual services, the number of localities establishing regulations to rein in prostitution skyrocketed. In
each area where a US base was located, a heretofore quiet and sparsely populated locality was transformed into a bustling entertainment district for US troops where prostitution flourished. Each
locality soon adopted regulations to control prostitution at the behest of US military commanders,
who made ‘requests’ of local governments or threatened to use the economic weapon of declaring
areas off-limits to US troops. There were even some localities that defined ‘the sale of sex’ as limited
to sex with foreigners, as Saitama Prefecture openly did. There, the prohibition on the sale of sex was
explicitly defined as ‘having sexual intercourse with nonspecific foreigners for compensation or the
promise of compensation’. In local assemblies, these sorts of regulations were criticized as expressions of colonial subordination. And though people expressed misgivings about the violations of
human rights that these regulations invited, economic dependence on the military bases and toadying to the occupation forces overwhelmed concerns about human rights. The US military, while
requesting crackdowns on prostitution, also persuaded local governments in areas such as Omisawamachi and Okinawa to establish zones where prostitutes were concentrated as part of an effort to
limit the spread of STDs. Even after the establishment of these sorts of regulations, the reality in each
of these localities was that entertainment districts for the US military prospered, and examinations
for STDs continued to be carried out under official auspices (Fujime 2003: 47–51). This demonstrates that these regulations prohibiting prostitution were not established to eliminate the sale of
sex. Rather, criminalizing the sale of sex provides the grounds for the surveillance and arrest of
women and facilitates the coerced examination and treatment of women for STDs. Prohibiting prostitution only puts women in a weaker position; it does not eliminate the sale of sex nor act as an
obstacle to the purchase of sexual services. What the military sought from local ordinances cracking
down on prostitution was the exclusion from these zones of women not subject to STD examinations to protect military personnel from STDs.
In the midst of the Korean War, the US–Japan peace treaty ending the US Occupation came into
effect in 1952, but according to the terms of the new US–Japan Security Treaty, the stationing of US
military forces in Japan continued. As a result, the purchase of sexual services by US military personnel continued as well. In 1953, when the Japanese government had just regained control of the reins
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of government, the number of women arrested in the vicinity of US bases for prostitution rose to
approximately 45,000 (Ichikawa 1978: 584–586). The cooperation between the US and the Japanese governments arising from the US–Japan Security Treaty greatly intensified the crackdown on
prostitution near military bases. The Japanese government and local municipalities did not merely
submit to the oppressive US Occupation forces; rather, in the context of cooperation with the US
government and military commanders, Japanese officials continued to tolerate the purchase of sexual
services by US military personnel while prohibiting and cracking down on Japanese women’s sale of
sexual services. The establishment of the Prostitution Prevention Law thus amounted to the extension to the entire country of extant regulations cracking down on the sale of sex.5
In the execution of the US military’s policy toward sex, the leaders of Japanese women’s movements active in prewar campaigns related to prostitution were great partners, beginning with the
Japanese chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (Fujin Kyofu Kai, hereafter JapanWCTU). Japanese anti-prostitution groups, which had been calling for stricter national programs
to control STDs since the prewar period, praised the American Plan. In 1935, the anti-prostitution
leader and head of the Japan-WCTU Kubushiro Ochimi studied in America at the Social Hygiene
Association and learned first hand about the American Plan. After returning to Japan, she praised
the US highly for having advanced a ‘movement to eradicate unlicensed prostitutes’ for the protection of military personnel and progressing from ‘a country that quietly condoned unlicensed
prostitutes to a country that eradicated prostitutes’. She lauded this accomplishment as an ‘epochmaking achievement for the whole world’ and proposed that the Japanese government develop a
national policy to prevent the spread of STDs, exerting a profound influence on popular Japanese
women’s movements (Kubushiro 1936, 1: 6–11, 2: 4–9; Nihon Kirisutokyo Fujin Kyofukai 1986:
652–655).
The Japanese prostitution eradication movement used the term ‘eradication of prostitutes’ in the
names of its organizations and to refer to itself, but from its earliest moments it clearly aimed at the
American-style prohibitionism criticized by the IAF as newfangled regulationism. After the World
War II, these sorts of Japanese prostitution eradication groups and women’s groups formed
extremely favorable relations of mutual cooperation with GHQ.
In 1947, the Central Coordination Committee for Women’s Welfare (Fujin Fukushi Chuo Renraku
Kai) was established on the recommendation of GHQ, and Gantoretto Tsuneko (Tsuneko Gauntlet), then head of the Japan-WCTU, became the Committee’s chairwoman. Around this time, the
Japan-WCTU and the Committee submitted position papers to the Japanese government and to
GHQ recommending that the names of ‘women regularly engaged in vice’ be recorded by the
police, that they be strictly prohibited from living, loitering, or engaging in group activities in the
vicinity of public buildings, and that the police be empowered to inspect their place of residence at
any time and to arrest suspected prostitutes and force them to undergo medical examinations for
STDs. When the MPs or the Japanese police repeatedly conducted wholesale roundups of suspected
prostitutes and lacked places to house them, the Japan-WCTU provided facilities. The Japan-WCTU
and the Committee submitted detailed reports recommending that the police’s coercive powers be
strengthened by legal measures, with such assertions as ‘since almost all fallen women (tenraku josei)
dislike the women’s dorms of correctional facilities and will not enter them voluntarily, new laws
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5. For a detailed treatment of the relationships between local ordinances regulating prostitution and the US Occupation
forces or Japanese Self-Defense forces, see Fujime (forthcoming).
Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex
41
regarding the prevention of STDs and crackdowns on vice allowing for forced detention [must be
established]’, and ‘people whose occupations make them likely sources of STDs should be subject to
forced examinations and treatment’. At a time when the occupation forces and the police were violating people’s civil rights by arresting them to serve official ends, coercing them into medical treatment, and detaining them, women’s groups were advancing themselves through cooperation with
the occupation forces and the Japanese government. They expressly advocated the intensification of
campaigns to identify and exert control over prostitutes as well as the increased use of coercion
(Ichikawa 1978: 552–554, 558–560; Nihon Kirisutokyo Fujin Kyof u Kai 1986: 702–703).
The criticisms of women’s groups were not directed at the occupation forces but at the women
who ‘lured’ soldiers into prostitution. Prostitute’s ‘disgraceful state’ was ‘a [type of] grief’ women’s
group members feared they ‘couldn’t bear, for were not [prostitutes] fellow women who had been
firmly trained in the long-cherished [ideals of] female virtue and chastity?’ Since the prewar period,
abolitionists regarded female prostitutes as ‘women with a shameful occupation’, who besmirched
the honor of the Japanese empire and the Imperial military, and called for strict state crackdowns on
them. But even when the Imperial military had been destroyed and the American military occupied
Japan, the abolitionists protected the military not the women. The YWCA’s Uemura Tamaki
addressed an open letter to US General Matthew Ridgway’s wife, warning that the Japanese women
who sold themselves to US troops were vile women and requesting that the US military crack down
on them to protect the pure youths in the military from evil prostitutes. To Uemura (1953), streetwalkers (unlicensed prostitutes) represented ‘the kind of women who chased after foreigners, and
attached themselves to them like ticks that wouldn’t let go’. And she regarded the American Plan,
which rounded up and arrested huge numbers of prostitutes during World War I and expelled them
from the areas around military bases, as an ideal national policy (Fujime 1997a: 333–334).
After the submission of the Prostitution Punishment Bill of 1948, there were many twists and
turns before the Prostitution Prevention Law was established at last in 1956. And it was the members
of women’s groups who took the initiative as citizens to form the movement to pass the legislation
outlawing prostitution.
4. The 1949 Convention and the Prostitution Prevention Law
In 1952, the Committee for the Promotion of the Establishment of Legislation Banning Prostitution
(Baishun Kinshi Ho Seitei Sokushin Iinkai, hereafter Promotion Committee) was formed, comprised
primarily of the members from five women’s groups: the Japan-WCTU, the Japan League of Women
Voters (Fujin Yukensha Domei), Japanese Association of University Women (Daigaku Fujin
Kyokai), and the Women’s Peace Association (Fujin Heiwa Kyokai). The Promotion Committee had
as its executives Kubushiro Ochimi (Chairwoman), Uemura Tamaki (Vice-Chair), and Kamichika
Ichiko (Vice-Chair). Soon a variety of powerful organizations, including Christian churches, social
welfare groups, the National Council Of the Federation Of Regional Women’s Clubs (Zenkoku Chiiki Fujin Dantai Renraku Kyogikai), and the left wing of the Socialist Party (Shakaito) were participating in the movement as well. They urged their representatives to submit a bill to the Diet and sent
appeals to the police to intensify their crackdowns on prostitution and to the appropriate government ministries to establish policies regarding prostitution. In 1954, the Japanese government set up
the Policy Committee on the Prostitution Problem (Baishun Mondai Taisaku Kyogikai) and chose
eight civic leaders to serve on it, including a number of prominent feminists such as Kubushiro
Ochimi, Muraoka Hanako, Hirabayashi Taiko, and Yamataka Shigeri. From 1954 to 1955, the Promotion Committee enlisted many more women’s groups and social groups in their cause. At the
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same time, two ‘prostitution punishment bills’ submitted by Diet members failed to pass. Finally in
1956, the government’s Prostitution Prevention Law was passed, and the laws currently in force
were established.
During the deliberations on the bills, women’s groups and female Diet members strongly emphasized that besides simply outlawing prostitution, a law should be established to punish female prostitutes for engaging in prostitution to provide proper moral guidance and instruction. Since the
Occupation era, the Japan-WCTU believed that rampant prostitution was due to prostitutes’ lack of
a sense of morality, and they insistently stressed the need for education in sexual morals. But they
were confident that a legal ban and criminal punishments were, in fact, the best methods of education. Kamichika Ichiko, a female Diet member who played a critical role in the establishment of the
law, remarked that ‘I have always raised the issue that there was a greater need for the person herself
to reflect [on her behavior]. That is why it is necessary that there be punishments’ (Kamichika 1953).
During the deliberation process, there was debate within the Promotion Committee over whether
‘protection’ should be stressed over ‘punishment’ as well as organized resistance by women working
in the red light districts who opposed the bill. In the end, the law was a ‘prevention law’ not a ‘punishment law’ (Fujime 1997a: 379–408; Fujino 2001: 169–255). That is to say, the goal that the
state and civic movements to establish a law had been consistently pursuing since 1948 was a law
prohibiting prostitution, and the Prevention Law was essentially no different from that. The Prostitution Prevention Law defines prostitution as ‘having sexual relations with a nonspecific partner in
exchange for remuneration or the promise of remuneration’. The law asserts that ‘[p]rostitution
injures human dignity, violates sexual morality, and upsets society’s proper public morals’. The law
enumerated its goals: ‘In addition to punishing activities that facilitate prostitution, it aims to prevent
prostitution by taking such measures as placing in protective custody or on parole women who seem
liable to engage in prostitution [on account of] their sexual behavior or their flaunting themselves in
public’. The law outlaws prostitution, declaring that ‘[n]o person engage in prostitution (baishun o
shi) nor be a partner to it (aitekata to natte)’. In other words, what is problematized here is the
women’s practice of ‘prostitution’ (i.e. selling sex). Men’s purchase of sexual services or exploitative
activities related to commercialized sex are regarded as subordinate crimes of facilitating or being a
party to the primary crime of ‘prostitution’. Under the terms of this law, female prostitutes and
‘women who seem liable to engage in prostitution’ were subject to protective custody and parole and
were punished for solicitation as well.
The Prostitution Prevention Law, which outlawed prostitution and made criminals out of female
prostitutes, is therefore completely different from the 1949 Convention. Its main point, as is evident
from its name, is the ‘prohibition of the exploitation of the prostitution of others’, and it does not
prohibit women’s practice of prostitution. There are people active in the movement calling for the
decriminalization of prostitution who interpret the 1949 Convention as demanding the decriminalization of prostitution (Delacoste and Alexander 1987: 184–214). The 1949 Convention prohibits
the exploitation of another for the purposes of prostitution even with the person’s consent and
makes liable to punishment the operation, management, financing, or leasing of a brothel. Countries
that are signatories to the 1949 Convention agree to ‘take all the necessary measures to repeal or
abolish any existing law, regulation or administrative provision by virtue of which persons who
engage in or are suspected of engaging in prostitution are subject either to special registration or to
the possession of a special document or to any exceptional requirements for supervision or notification’. In short, signatories’ obligation is not to ‘prohibit prostitution’ but to ‘prohibit the exploitation of prostitution [of others]’. This was the abolition of public regulation and control of female
prostitutes and women suspected of prostitution. There can be no doubt that the 1949 Convention
Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex
43
prohibits exactly the sort of regulation and control of female prostitutes and women suspected of
prostitution that the postwar US military, the Japanese government, and members of women’s
groups pursued.
What occurred in Japan, however, was a subtle sidestepping. One of the main reasons that the
state and civic groups united in pursuit of the Prostitution Prevention Law was because it was
argued that if they did not, Japan would have lagged behind international standards, and this would
have become an obstacle to regaining a respectable position in international society. The promoters
of the law, whether they be female Diet members, activists in the women’s movement, or government officials, all delivered the same message with their different voices. They stressed that if Japan
had no law prohibiting prostitution, it would be unable to enter the UN or be reinstated into international society (Fujino 2001: 185, 219, 222, 230). The statement that ‘[a]ll the civilized countries
of the world have all prohibited prostitution, and Japan is the only one that lags behind’ circulated
widely. To cite just one example, in a round-table discussion in the magazine Fujin Koron in 1954,
Kamichika Ichiko mentions the visit of Eleanor Roosevelt to Japan in the following context.
‘Recently, when Mrs. Roosevelt came to Japan, she even asked, “Your country has [rampant] prostitution, doesn’t it?” This is truly a disgrace. She said, “Your country doesn’t even have a single law
[prohibiting it], do you?” In fact, on this issue [of legal prohibitions], there’s only Japan and
Turkey.’
However, the idea that the worldwide trend was toward prohibitions on prostitution is a fiction.
It was not ‘only Japan and Turkey’ that did not prohibit prostitution itself; in fact, prostitution was
the norm. And even the law of US Allies only prohibited prostitution itself in the vicinity of military
bases. For the most part, the laws of various nations at the time ‘prohibit the exploitation of prostitution [of others]’. Even though there were some regulations that restrained prostitution indirectly
by, for example, prohibited solicitation in public, the number of countries that had legal prohibitions on prostitution itself was small. A law that had as its main point prohibiting prostitution, and
was directed at punishing women, was rather an exception in regard to world trends. This is clear
upon examination of the laws in various countries at the time, just as researchers studying the prostitution issue in America have pointed out (Ito 1953; Rodosho 1955; Wincle and Kinsie 1971: 9,
12, 277).
Furthermore, in Japan at the time, the regulations on prostitutes renting brothel space had been
abandoned in 1946, and in 1947 the imperial edicts relating to the punishment of women forced
into prostitution had become domestic laws during peacetime. And the problem of these laws being
incompatible with the 1949 Convention had already been set aside. Yet, police and public health
offices’ public regulation of prostitution in the red light districts and entertainment districts around
US military bases continued. In other words, if they were to conform to the spirit of the 1949 Convention, this public regulation of prostitution would have remained a problem. Despite the fact that
it defied the mainstream of international society as reflected in the 1949 Convention’s ‘prohibition
on the exploitation of prostitution’, this was replaced with a ‘prohibition of prostitution’ when it was
presented in Japan. And the state and public agencies did not take up the issue of conforming to the
spirit of the 1949 Convention but instead made female prostitutes’ crimes and punishments the main
issue.
Why is it that, rather than following the main trends of international society, the prohibition and
punishment of prostitution was so avidly pursued, and laws criminalizing women’s behavior were
established? Why was a spurious account of ‘international trends’ so widely announced and disseminated? Why was the deception that almost all the civilized countries of the world had prohibited
prostitution presented as ‘worldwide commonsense’? Why did the Prostitution Prevention Law
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FUJIME Yuki
emphasize the ‘prohibition of prostitution’ rather than the prohibition of exploitation of prostitution
[of another]’ as suggested by the 1949 Convention?
This can probably be explained by the great power that American prohibitionism and militarism
had on the course of Japan’s postwar development. US Allies’ law limited the prohibition of prostitution to the areas around military bases, but in this era from the end of World War II into the Korean
War, all of Japan was in a sense the US military base in the Far East. Because postwar Japan became
the US’s strategic Asian anti-communist ‘base’, a spirit of protecting the military as distinct from that
of UN conventions made regulating prostitution the central concern. On the one hand, we cannot
overlook the role of Japanese feminists who sympathized with the American Plan and regarded the
‘disgraceful state’ of female prostitutes as more of a problem than the violence of the American military. On account of their faith in the advanced level of development of the US and their belief in the
old prohibitionist tenets that ‘prostitution is a crime and prohibition of it is [a social] good’, both
carried over from the prewar period, they acted as a vanguard for the implementation of a policy
toward sex that benefited the US military. They thereby turned their backs on actual world trends
and represented the ‘logic of the US military’ as if it were a ‘worldwide trend’. This statement that
deceived people into thinking that a ‘prohibition on prostitution’ that would benefit the US military
was actually ‘worldwide commonsense’ became endemic. Thus, the Prostitution Prevention Law,
which regards women’s practice of prostitution rather than the sexual exploitation as the crime, was
established.
5. The US–Japan Military Alliance and the Prostitution Prevention Law
System
Laws that criminalize prostitution did not only serve to help control the spread of STDs. They also
were regularly employed to cover up and pardon sexual violence and exploitation on the part of US
military personnel and shift blame for these crimes onto women.
I will examine several incidents that occurred in the period after the signing of the US–Japan Security Treaty but before the establishment of the Prostitution Prevention Law. In 1953, two female
students visiting Sendai City on a school trip were assaulted by two American soldiers stationed at
Camp Nigatake in Sendai. One of the girls fled to a nearby police station, and the other was discovered unconscious. Nearby was some money apparently left by the soldiers. The police, city officials,
school officials, and newspapers all shared the same response: They criticized the girls for being ‘mistaken for prostitutes’. In 1954, three US soldiers from the Sagamihara base raped two first-year middle-school students. The US military argued that the girls received a dollar in military scrip and some
chocolate, so ‘[t]his was not rape but prostitution. It is rather the girls who must be held to account.’
In 1955 in Gunma Prefecture, two soldiers stationed at Camp Ota raped a woman while she was
practicing kendo. The police arrested two suspects and started proceedings against them, but the
Public Prosecutor’s Office took the position emphasized by the US military that the woman had
‘been walking about for the purpose of prostitution’ and refused to prosecute them on the grounds
that ‘the women had been walking alone at night in the vicinity of the US military camp’ (Fujime
1999a: 131–134, 138).
These incidents reveal that US military personnel had the sense that if they believed that the
woman ‘was a prostitute’, then it would not matter if they raped her. Whether the woman was a
prostitute or not was not the issue; what mattered was whether the soldier ‘thought she was’. Being
‘thought to be [a prostitute]’ is seen as the women’s mistake, and they are the ones subjected to criticism. The explanations of the individual soldiers who committed the rapes and the responses of the
Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex
45
officials of the American military are thoroughly imbued with the values of the American Plan, which
sees no problem with arresting and forcibly examining women for STDs on the ‘suspicion’ of prostitution, and the militarist logic that condones sexual violence and the coercion of women. Laws that
prohibit prostitution are supported by a logic that condones sexual violence, and the enacting of not
only local ordinances but also national laws establishes that logic as a social norm.
And what were the consequences in the wake of the enactment of the Prostitution Prevention
Law? The majority of the women who had been working in areas where licensed prostitution was
concentrated were forced by this law into the world of illegal prostitution and became shackled even
more firmly to the violent control of groups of pimps. During the 40 years since this law was
enforced nationwide, more than 120,000 women have been arrested and detained for violating Article 5 (on solicitation) (Fujime 2001a: 218). Thus, women have continued to be made into criminals,
while it is common knowledge that the sex industry has grown immensely since the establishment of
the Prostitution Prevention Law. Commercialized sex around military bases and the public regulation of it have also persisted.
For example, in the area around the Iwakuni base, more than 200,000 people a year visited STD
clinics operating up until 1969. The US military made weekly visits to the businesses in the entertainment districts, checking STD examination cards, and exerted pressure on businesses with violators by declaring them off-limits to soldiers. American soldiers frequently assaulted female
prostitutes, but most of these incidents were never publicized. If women who were abused took their
cases to court, they would be treated like criminals themselves, which inhibited them from going
public with their victimization. Thus they became daily victims of violence. In the 20 years from
1955 until just before the conclusion of the Vietnam War in 1974, there were six murders involving
American soldiers. In four of these cases, the victims were hostesses who served US military personnel. In the 10 years between 1975 and 1984, there were five murders, and excluding the one case in
which US soldiers threw a Korean man down a flight of steps and killed him, the victims in all four of
the other cases were hostesses. These incidents were only reported in local newspapers. The murders
of hostesses were not regarded as meriting national news coverage. These women were ignored by
society not only in the daily violence they suffered but even when they were murdered. Even the
police regarded these women more as troublemakers who incited crime than as victims of crime, and
their ‘counter-measure’ in response to this violence was the harsh crackdowns on violations of the
Prostitution Prevention Law in the entertainment districts around US military bases. Women
received this sort of treatment, hemmed in on both sides by tolerance for American soldiers’ violence
and purchase of sexual services. In 1977, for example, a soldier who broke into a woman’s house in
the middle of the night and assaulted her at knifepoint emphasized in court that since he had tried to
‘pay’, it was not rape and intimated that the victim was a prostitute. According to a local newspaper,
the perpetrator had been prosecuted and convicted in another rape incident by the same court. The
newspaper regarded this case as an unusual example, since ‘robberies, rapes, and attempted rapes
happen practically every night around the base, but they almost always end in [someone] merely crying [herself] to sleep’ (Fujime 2003: 85–88, 90).
The situation in Okinawa, removed from the mainland of Japan and under the jurisdiction of the
US, was even more overt than in the Japanese mainland. Beginning in 1946 with a ‘prohibition on
prostitution with occupation forces’, the US military issued a stream of ordinances in regard to the
buying and selling of sex and thoroughly regulated prostitution and STDs. They wiped out prostitution they feared would spread STDs through the overzealous use of the off-limits policy and created
the ‘A Sign’ system of granting permission to operate to sex-related businesses that certified the
health of their women. During the Vietnam War, the number of female prostitutes reached 15,000
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FUJIME Yuki
(Naha-shi 2001: 290). Around the time of the return of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty in 1972,
there was a Prostitution Prevention Law in effect in Okinawa, just as on the mainland. But whereas
the American military bases on the mainland were gradually being abandoned or reduced in size,
75% of the American bases in Japan were concentrated in Okinawa, and incidents of sexual violence
by US troops continued to occur frequently. According to an investigation by the Association of
Women who Reject the Bases and the Military (Kichi to Guntai o Yurusanai Onnatachi no Kai),
there were eight cases of rape and murder between 1970 and the mid-1980s, and seven of those victims were hostesses (‘Okinawa o Shiru’ Hensan Iinkai 2000: 470–473). In 1995, at a time when
Okinawa was in an uproar over an incident in which three American soldiers raped a young girl,
Pacific Commander Admiral Richard Mackey made a public gaffe when, upon hearing that the soldiers used a rental car when committing the rape, remarked that ‘if they had money for a rental car,
they could have just paid for a prostitute’. He made no attempt to hide the fact that it was standard
practice not to reprimand US soldiers for buying sex.
The establishment of the various laws prohibiting prostitution was thus interwined with the US
Occupation and the US–Japan security regime. At the same time that they provided ‘safer purchasing
of sex’ for the US military, these laws shifted responsibility for the sexual violence and sexual exploitation perpetrated by US military personnel onto women and functioned as a means to conceal US
military crimes, thereby contributing to the US–Japan military alliance. Had Japanese society been a
society that valued women’s human rights, it probably would not have established the US–Japan military alliance or prostitution prevention laws.
Nearly half a century has passed since the establishment of the Prostitution Prevention Law, but
the US military bases from which attacks on Korea and Vietnam were launched during the Cold War
era are today the launching grounds for attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq in what the US has termed
the ‘War on Terror’. Recently, rapes by US soldiers continue to occur in the areas around bases in
Okinawa, Iwakuni, and Sasebo. Japan’s sex industry has grown exponentially, and in the entertainment districts around the military bases and other red light districts, Filipina and other women who
have emigrated from other countries are a conspicuous presence. Even to feminists whose true desire
in advocating the prohibition on prostitution is the abolition of commercialized sex, these facts demonstrate that laws prohibiting prostitution did not lead to the abolition of commercialized sex. The
Prostitution Prevention Law regime, far from eliminating prostitution, further weakened the position of female prostitutes and drove them into a terrible predicament. What must not be forgotten
now is the situation of foreign women working in the sex industry. They are treated as criminals having violated immigration laws as well as the Prostitution Prevention Law, putting them in a doubly
and triply vulnerable position.
Today, the relation between the US–Japan military alliance and the Prostitution Prevention Law
regime may be entering into a new phase. US President George W. Bush signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, publicizing both domestically and internationally his war on human
trafficking. Since then, the US State Department has issued an annual report ranking the anti-trafficking measures of various countries, which has come to exert great pressure on those governments.
In 2004, Japan was listed in that report as a country that should receive special scrutiny, and the
Japanese government hurriedly established a number of anti-trafficking measures, announcing an
‘Action Plan’ that included strengthening the Immigration Bureau, punishing traffickers, and caring
for victims. However, criticism of the US government, the very government that labels human trafficking a ‘special crime’, is growing both domestically and internationally over its contribution to the
increase in trafficking through wars that give rise to forced military service and prostitution. Others
criticize the US government for conflating human trafficking and commercialized sex, and supporting
Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex
47
groups dedicated to prohibitionism, while suppressing female prostitutes’ own struggle. There are
also voices pointing out the resemblance between the Bush administration’s ‘war on trafficking’ and
the social purity movements in America a century ago. In addition, while the Japanese government’s
‘Action Plan’ makes much of the idea of care for victims, it makes no mention of the repeal of the
Prostitution Prevention Law that constitutes the most substantial legal basis for treating female prostitutes—the victims of sexual violence and sexual exploitation—as criminals. Furthermore, support
groups for immigrants in Japan point out that in recent years various destination countries for Asian
immigrants have adopted the same policy of intensifying prohibitions on the entry of young female
immigrants as a measure against human trafficking, but this has prompted traffickers to come up with
even more ingenious methods and, in effect, inflicts a punishment on young female immigrants
themselves.6
Today, Japanese feminism is once again invoking ‘international trends’ and pinning its hopes on
the American and Japanese governments prohibiting a ‘crime’. But should feminism make common
cause with the government on this issue? Or rather should it consider the history of justifying violence against women that the uniting of militarism and prohibitionism engendered and strive for the
dismantling of the structures of violence? Are we not approaching that crossroads?
6. Conclusion
This essay has detailed the participation of feminism in the uniting of militarism and prohibitionism
and clarified the intimate connections between the two. Just as America’s implementation of the
American Plan during World War I required the leaders of the social purity movements, many of
whom were women, so too would America’s policies on sex have been impossible to implement in
Japan after World War II without the cooperation of many Japanese feminists. The roots of prohibitionism in Japanese feminism reach far back into the prewar period. The confluence of that prohibitionism and the militarism of the postwar American and Japanese governments gave rise to the
Prostitution Prevention Law.
One of the reasons that oppression of women brought about by the union of the militarism and
prohibitionism has not become a subject of critique within Japanese feminism in the past is probably
that it raises the issue of the history of our own failings. But feminists should not rewrite women’s
history after the fact. In the present moment, when globalization is expanding and war is enveloping
the world, critically examining the union of militarism and prohibitionism, and acknowledging the
legacy of feminism’s failures is not merely describing the past.
Just as the US’s current ‘war on trafficking’ brings to mind the social purity movement of a century ago, so the movement to establish a Japanese law prohibiting human trafficking recalls the process of establishment of the Prostitution Prevention Law a half-century ago. Many Japanese feminists
participated in both movements. Both united many people who desired the abolition of commercialized sex and human trafficking, fortifying the base of the movements. Both expected that prohibition
by the state would be useful in that abolition. Just as the postwar laws prohibiting prostitution were
linked with the US–Japan military strategy, today’s ‘international trends’ pressing for measures
against human trafficking originate in such anti-terrorism measures as the UN Convention against
................................................................................................................................ ..................................................................................
6. See, for example, Friedlin (2004), Meltzer (2005), Katayama (2005), BBC News (2005), Nagase (2005), and Heaton
(2005).
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FUJIME Yuki
Transnational Organized Crime and the US State Department’s reports. Just as Japanese feminists
welcomed America’s policies a half-century ago, today there are those who see the pressure brought
to bear by America as a useful reinforcement that stimulates the Japanese government to adopt countermeasures against human trafficking.
In contrast to the feminists a half-century ago, who were more zealous than the government about
punishing female prostitutes, the feminists who lead the current movement to establish laws prohibiting human trafficking are demanding that the government expand care for the victims. Yet, they do
not make an issue of the fact that the Prostitution Prevention Law regime has forced the victims of
human trafficking to bear the additional burdens of being regarded as having committed a crime and
being subjected to punishment. But is the care for victims possible while retaining the Prostitution
Prevention Law as is? As long as a law prohibiting human trafficking is a complement to the Prostitution Prevention Law, women in the position of selling their sexual services will be divided into two
groups: women who are ‘recognized’ as victims of trafficking, coerced into prostitution, without
rights yet ‘cared for’; and women, not so recognized, who continue to be subject to ‘punishment’.
Just as the implementation of the Prostitution Prevention Law greatly increased the violence and
harm suffered by Japanese women driven underground as they continued to sell their sexual services
to survive, prohibitionism coupled with laws prohibiting human trafficking could actually drive
immigrant women into even worse crises.
The union of prohibitionism and militarism has not yet gone by the wayside; it is still here. Feminists have to rid themselves of prohibitionism, especially in light of its history. The 1949 Convention
set a high standard in the letter of the law, but Japanese society surreptitiously sidestepped the letter
of the law and established a law based on prohibitionism that violates the spirit of the 1949 Convention. The reason that even today the Prostitution Prevention Law is useless for taking care of the victims of human trafficking or punishing the perpetrators is not to be found in the 1949 Convention
but in the problems of Japanese society, including its feminism, which distorted its letter and abandoned its spirit. No matter how progressive the international treaty, it is constrained by domestic
laws and by its application in keeping with the ways of the society that accepts it. If we shift the
blame onto the 1949 Convention and entrust our hopes to a new international treaty and those
domestic laws without critically examining Japanese society in the past and present, we are bound to
end up, just as we did a half-century ago, sacrificing the victims of sexual exploitation to gain prestige
for the nation.
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