JAPAN: Law Banning Teen Prostitution May Have Little Impact

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Oct 17 1997 (IPS) - The Tokyo government has passed Japan’s first law against teenage prostitution, but the real cure lies in addressing an environment that encourages youngsters to indulge in sex for pay, and allows some adults to take advantage of it.

The practice has become so common in recent years that the Japanese have coined a phrase for it — ‘enjo kosai’ or ‘compensative dating’.

Early this month and after intense lobbying by citizens and activists, the Tokyo metropolitan government passed an ordinance that targets persons aged 18 years or older who buy sex with youngsters under 18. It also penalises persons who act as an accomplice by helping others buy sex with minors.

Penalties include a prison term with labour up to one year or a maximum fine of about 4,100 U.S. dollars.

Nobuo Hirabayashi of the Tokyo metropolitan office says he hopes the ordinance will provide the necessary protection for youngsters, and be an effective deterrent to unscrupulous adults.

But Hiroshi Kato, a child counselor who seeks punitive measures against adult sex offenders, cautions that the law should come down hard on the guilty adults and not the youngsters. This call was by 168,000 petitions from concerned residents in Tokyo.

As it is, Kato says Japan’s laws do not punish enough those who make use of commercial sex.

In the anti-prostitution law for instance, there is no provision that punishes those who have sex with prostitutes. Instead, it calls only for punitive measures against the prostitutes themselves and their agents.

Activists and teachers say the problem of sex for money among teenagers has become more common over the years.

According to private surveys by teachers, the percentage of third-year senior high school girls who have had sexual intercourse nearly doubled from 18.5 percent in 1987 to 34 percent in 1996 compared with their male counterparts at 28.6 percent in 1996.

A questionnaire by the Tokyo government in October revealed that one in 30 middle and high school students said they had participated in ‘enjo kosai’. Among the reasons they cited were a need for money and a desire for a “thrill”.

Interviews in the Japanese media reveal that many teenaged girls sell their bodies so that they can buy expensive clothes or take overseas trips.

One 16-year-old girl told reporters that she has sex with three men on a regular basis. They provide her with around 413 U.S. dollars for each visit, or at times give her presents instead.

“I am not in love with any of them and I do not feel guilty about what I am doing,” she said. “I just live from day to day.”

Miyoko Kono, who operates a gynecological clinic in Hiroshima, says she has treated 2,500 teenage girls in the last five years. Many of them contract sexually transmitted diseases from their paid sex partners, or get pregnant.

Kato says he hopes “the law will provide us with an arm to get at adults who buy sex from minors”.

But sociologists do not think legislation changes such practices by themselves, and some say it may even make efforts to stop ‘enjo kosai’ even harder.

“The law is not going to change the situation that easily,” argues Shinji Miyadai, associate professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University. “The implementation of an ordinance alone would only force teen prostitution underground.”

Hirabaysahi acknowledges that “the new legislation is not enough”.

That is why the metropolitan government has developed a two- year project to deal with the trend in Japanese society where money has become more important than anything else for the people engage in ‘enjo kosai’, he added.

The project involves getting Japanese families and schools to face the problem by introducing sex education and discussing the propriety of the sometimes obsessive desire among middle and high school students for material goods. Often, this is the driving force behind decision to sell sex.

“We will also begin research and establish study sessions on the wide array of external factors that influence teenagers, like sex- filled comics and other adult material easily accessible to young people,” said Hirabayashi.

But curtailing the teenage date scene is not going to be easy with the attitudes expressed by Japan’s teenagers.

In a recent Japan Youth Research Institute survey of about 1,000 senior high school students, as many as 25.3 percent of the respondents said agreed that “it is within one’s own rights” to prostitute oneself or to sell sex if he or she wants to.

Likewise, sociologists also say the penchant among older Japanese men for young girls, especially those in school uniforms, contributes to the rise of ‘enjo kosai’.

“The allure of young women is hard to resist for many Japanese men who want to spend a pleasant evening away from the responsibilities of office and home,” said Kazuko Ishihara, a counsellor.

Most girls get dates through telephone clubs, a flourishing business in Japan where wealthy men can take their pick from a host of young girls who provide their beeper numbers so they can be reached for negotiations on sex.

Already, the Kyoto prefectural government has banned these clubs in a bid to control prostitution among the young. Often, advertisements for the clubs are pasted in public places around the country, which school girls have easy access to.

In many ways, Ishihara says, the social evils emerging in Japan are a sign of problems weaving their way into its affluent, increasingly materialistic, society. “The Japanese are just beginning to wake up to the darker aspects of their economic success,” Ishihara said.