J A P A N
Men's Attitude Key to Curbing Trafficking - Activists
by Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO,
Dec 17 (IPS) — Hiroshi Goto, a 40-year-old secretary to a politician, says
he stays single because he is too busy to be married or have a steady relationship.
"I don't miss having a girlfriend because work is so important to me.
When I want female company, I visit Tokyo's various nightspots with my
colleagues. Life is much easier that way," explains Goto (not his real
name.)
Goto's airy attitude towards sex is viewed by activists as a telling
example of why Japan remains a haven for traffickers of women who bring
them here from developing countries to work as prostitutes.
"Japanese men see women as second class. This attitude underscores the
tacit acceptance of women as sexual objects to satisfy men," says Sumiko
Shimizu, head of the Japan Women's Council, a feminist organisation.
Japan's rich economy, which peaked in the eighties, is a magnet for pimps
and gangsters who make a lucrative living selling sex in the country at
rates 10 to 20 times higher than in other parts of Asia.
The underground sex trade — estimated to run into 83 billion U.S. dollars
a year — is one of Japan's fastest growing industries. More than 150,000
foreign women are employed in bars, snack bars, and massage parlours.
Filipino and Thai nationals top the list of those in the 'entertainment
industry', followed by a growing number of South American and East European
women, who usually enter Japan on short entertainment tourist visas and
end up staying illegally for years.
Horror stories of these women being held in bondage and forced to follow
slave-like conditions — working without vacation to pay back debts of
an average of 30,000 dollars — have forced many Japanese to finally wake
up to the problem.
Crackdowns on brothels have led to forced deportation of the foreign
women. Pimps often get away with small penalties, a bone of contention
for activists who say more focus should be given to those who run the
businesses instead of the women.
Yuriko Saito, an activist who works in the rehabilitation of trafficked
Thai women who have managed to escape from Japan, explains that activists
have indeed managed to highlight the urgency of trafficking at a national
level.
But the only lasting way to bring change is by raising the consciousness
of men about the problem — and address the demand part as well, Saito
says.
"Despite all the hard work, I see no major changes in the Japanese sex
market," points out Saito, who belongs to the grassroots organisation
Self-Empowerment Programme on Migration. "This is because men think there
is nothing wrong in buying sex, an attitude that hampers activists working
to protect vulnerable poor women from selling their bodies."
Indeed, the latest in a series of scandals that rocked Japan and illustrated
disregard for women's rights was this week's decision by the government
to order an investigation into a group of assemblymen from Saitama, a
suburb of Tokyo, who used public funds to pay for Thai hostesses they
allegedly brought to their hotels during a trip to Bangkok.
The uproar, however, typically focused on the use of public money — the
men were ordered to pay back around 6,000 dollars — rather than the criminal
implications of prostitution and its link to trafficking.
Japanese men also came under the spotlight Friday when China's state-run
Xinhua news agency reported that Beijing has sentenced 14 people to jail
and is seeking the detention of three Japanese for their involvement in
organising a sex orgy for hundreds of Japanese tourists in September.
The orgy, organised as part of a Japanese company trip, angered thousands
of Chinese in Zhuhai in southern Guangdong province.
According to the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) figures on trafficking,
there are some 250,000 women and children victims in China.
Some activists groups here in Japan have launched new programmes to influence
attitudes towards prostitution, focusing on sexual rights at the core.
A leading campaigner on this front is Men's Thinking About the Role of
Men, comprised of 10 male members who organise programmes to discuss and
inform men about the rights of women.
"I was pained by stories of trafficked foreign women in Japan and realised
that men are not educated on sex from a women's rights point of view.
Social rules were such that we accepted stereotype gender roles and believed
it is was normal for men to be sexually aggressive," explains Yusaku Tsuji,
who launched the group.
Tsuji, who believes that stricter laws will not end trafficking, offers
workshops, seminars and open discussions where he encourages men to talk
about sex and analyse prostitution.
The programme, he says, has done wonders. After deep analysis, participants
often realise — many for the first time — that prostitution does violate
women and they are responsible for this.
Shimizu, a former member of the Diet who pioneered Japan's anti-child
pornography bill in 1999, says changing men's attitudes is an uphill struggle
but must be done.
"In a country
where gender equality is an alien concept, Japanese men are not going
to accept activists' call to hold men responsible for prostitution that
easily," she says. (END/Copyright IPS)
