Japan eyes changing prostitution law to punish sex buyers

TOKYO: Japan should overhaul its prostitution law to punish those who seek to buy sex, experts recommended on Thursday (Sep 17) in proposals likely to lead to changes to the decades-old legislation.

Currently, street sex workers face fines or imprisonment for public solicitation, but their customers face no punishment, making Japan an outlier among developed countries.

Calling for the abolition of this asymmetry, the panel of legal experts proposed in a report that clients also be penalised for solicitation both in public and online.

It is seen as almost certain that the justice ministry will make legal amendments based on the panel's conclusions.

Acts such as negotiating paid sex in public and loitering on the street to "browse" sex workers should be considered punishable, the panel said.

Some campaigners have demanded a "Nordic model" that decriminalises selling sex while criminalising paying for it - adopted by countries like Sweden, Norway and France.

However, the panel did not recommend decriminalising sex work altogether or redefining prostitution to include acts beyond vaginal intercourse.

Some sellers, the panel said, "willingly" joined the sex trade and their solicitation "disrupts social order".

Risa, a member of the sex trade survivor group Toka ("Light"), said if the laws continue to target sellers, "they won't be able to report violence and other terrible experiences to police, for fear of being labelled criminals".

The concept of free will in sex work is a myth given that compounding difficulties like poverty, trauma and disability push many women into the trade, the 37-year-old told AFP, using a pseudonym.

In her 20s, "I did think I was doing it voluntarily" to survive adversities including her abusive, drunk father, a job loss and depression, Risa said.

But "I wonder how many people would still say they want to keep doing it" if they had a chance at re-education, employment and mental health treatment, she added.

"I had to act like a doll, switch off all emotions and pretend to be pleased no matter what was done to me."

When enacted in 1956, Japan's anti-prostitution laws viewed sex workers as an "evil" who seduced married men, the antithesis of the "chaste wives" that society expected women to be, feminist lawyer Yukiko Tsunoda told a recent symposium in Tokyo.

"Nobody even thought of the sex trade as violence" against women, she said.

Any legal change is overdue for Nao, a Toka member who fled abuse by her mother and lived under a bridge from age 14, turning to street prostitution to "survive the day".

As morning arrived, the "mostly middle-aged men on their way to work" would approach her and offer around 5,000 yen ($32) for sex, she told AFP.

Back then, "I needed to feel that I had something that made my life worthwhile", recalled the now 25-year-old Nao -- a pseudonym she uses when campaigning.