Japan eyes prostitution law change to punish sex buyers

Japan should reconsider its prostitution law to punish those who seek to buy sex, according to a panel of legal experts who recommended the change in a report likely to lead to amendments to the decades-old legislation. Presently, street sex workers face fines or imprisonment for solicitation in public, but their customers are not penalised, making Japan an anomaly among developed nations.

The panel recommended that both the solicitors and the sex workers be penalised, extending the prohibition to online solicitation. They suggested that acts such as negotiating paid sex in public and loitering on the street to browse sex workers should be considered punishable. Some campaigners have pushed for a "Nordic model," which decriminalises selling sex while criminalising paying for it, a model already adopted by countries like Sweden, Norway, and France.

However, the panel did not propose decriminalising sex work entirely or redefining prostitution to include acts beyond vaginal intercourse. The panel acknowledged that some sex workers willingly entered the trade and that their activities disrupt social order. A sex trade survivor, Risa, highlighted that the laws targeting sellers prevent her and other sellers from reporting violence and other terrible experiences to police due to fear of being labelled criminals.

She recounted her own experiences, emphasising that the concept of free will in sex work is a myth, as many women are forced into the trade by poverty, trauma, and disability. Risa, who used to think she was doing it voluntarily to survive adversities, now wonders how many people would still choose to continue if given the chance at re-education, employment, and mental health treatment.

The anti-prostitution laws enacted in 1956 viewed sex workers as an "evil" who seduced married men, contrasting sharply with the "chaste wives" society expected women to be. Feminist lawyer Yukiko Tsunoda noted that nobody then thought of the sex trade as violence against women. The legal change is seen as overdue, as exemplified by Nao, a Toka member who escaped abuse by her mother and turned to street prostitution to survive.

Back then, middle-aged men would approach her and offer around ¥5,000 for sex, and while she needed to feel her life had purpose, she now knows she was a victim of sexual exploitation.