Prostitution is classified as ‘limitedly legal’ in Japan, a situation that dates back thousands of years to the 16^th century red light districts, such as Yoshiwara in present day Tokyo, which were expanded to private ventures in the late 17th century. While the Meiji state imposed some limits and the anti-prostitution movement arose in the 1920s, prostitution continued to flourish under limited state control (Lie 252).

Perhaps the most infamous (and highly contested) example of Japanese sex work is the creation of ‘comforter’ divisions in the military, units of first Japanese and then Korean prostitutes who followed the Japanese army around Asia and provided sexual services. Justified as an attempt to prevent the spread of venereal disease and attacks on foreign women, such as those occurring in the Nanjiing massacre, the program also served as a disciplinary, modernizing, westernizing project, producing soldiers as heterosexual, hyper-masculine, yet disciplined (thus the official nature of the program) citizen soldiers (Lie 254-255).

Furthermore, state (official) prostitution continued shortly after the war, during the American occupation, with the formation of the Recreation and Amusement Association to entertain Allied forces, in part to protect the ‘respectable’ women of Japan (Lie 256).

Yet, in 1957, the Japanese Prostitution Prevention Law was passed, outlawing what was once an official state enterprise. It sounds like a simple statement, but it’s not; under closer examination, such a claim quickly breaks down. First of all, the law only covers vaginal sex; all other kinds of compensated sex acts are still legal. Secondly, it specifically forbids “intercourse with an unspecified person in exchange for payment,” leaving open intercourse with “specified” persons in exchange for payment (i.e. acquaintances, a setup, etc). (Matsubara). Furthermore, while soliciting by prostitutes, pimping, and operating brothels are all illegal, this has only led to the emergence of other operations that provide sexual services, including ‘fashion health’ massage parlors and ‘soaplands.’ The massage parlors provide services other than straight intercourse, while the soaplands justify their activities by saying they occur between couples who have become known to one another. Collectively, these and other businesses are referred to as fuzoku, or sex industry, businesses (Hongo).

Yet the industry itself may be on a downward trend; in its place, freelance operations are on the rise, as the majority of prostitution acts in Japan currently are conducted by individual women (or schoolgirls) seeking out a partner, either by advertising through telephone call rooms, online, or night walking.

This poses a particular problem in light of the way the prostitution prevention law, and its enforcement, is framed. Basically, the focus is on prohibitionism, criminalizing the sale of sexual services and punishing/blaming the prostitute (Fujime 33). Thus, the moral panics arising around the enjo kosai phenomenon, which Lex discusses in his page on the topic, are only a natural extension of Japanese attitudes towards prostitution, putting the prostitute at fault. Yet this ignores the systemic factors that might draw an individual towards prostitution, or enjo kosai (the two are not synonymous) in the first place.

While it is true that many individuals claim to engage in enjo kosai in return for pocket money, there are complicating factors. Some prime examples come from Japanese films, including All About Lily Chou-Chou. In this film, the class bully forces one of his female classmates to engage in enjo kosai and collects portions of her earnings from her; the female classmate, Tsuda, adopts a blasé attitude about sex in return (common of enjo kosai narratives), but ends up committing suicide in the end. A similar narrative arises in Youth in Fury, in which a wealthy college student has a female acquaintance strip naked in front of a whole party of people in return for a loan to save her family business.

Finally, many of the female patrons of Japanese host clubs are actually sex workers who go to the clubs in order to be understood. Further discussion of host clubs and systemic gender binaries can be found here.

However, such media narratives are double-edged swords; while exploring detrimental social forces which contribute to prostitution (peer pressure, blasé attitudes towards sex, family situations and economic hardship), they use these very examples to problematize female empowerment (for example, the kogyaru style which is often associated with enjo kosai, and consensual sexual relationships which might border on commercial). Additionally, media narratives frequently reduce engagement in enjo kosai as an attempt to make ‘pocket change’ in order to buy designer goods, reducing female decision making to consumerist practices and female stereotypes which the media itself encourages in its advertising and cultural production (films, magazines, etc.) For more on this, you may turn to the pages on media and fashion's influence on subject formation.

Works Cited:

All about Lily Chou Chou. Dir. Shunjo Iwai. Prod. Koko Maeda. Rockwell Eyes, 2001. DVD.

Fujime, Yuki. "Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex: The Union of Militarism and Prohibitionism." Social Science Japan Journal. 9.1 (2006): 33-50. JSTOR. 30 April 2015.

Hongu, Jun. "Law Bends Over Backward to Allow 'Fuzoku." The Japan Times. 27 May 2008. Accessed 30 April 2015.

Lie, John. "The State as Pimp: Prostitution and the Patriarchal State in Japan in the 1940s." The Sociological Quarterly 38.2 (1997): 251-263. JSTOR. Accessed 30 April 2015.

Matsubara, Hiroshi."Prostitution Testing Bounds of Culture, Business," The Japan Times. 16 March 2002. Accessed April 30 2015.

The Youth in Fury. Dir. Masahiro Shinoda. Shochiku Eiga, 2006. DVD.