A woman looks out at the Tokyo skyline. Photo: AFP
TOKYO: In the golden years of Japan’s economic boom, its men would venture to foreign shores, seeking the thrill of illicit encounters offered by women from poorer nations. But today, the tables have turned, with foreign men now flocking to Tokyo for “sex tourism” as the yen weakens and poverty rises.
Yoshihide Tanaka, secretary general of the Liaison Council Protecting Youths (Seiboren), painted a grim picture of the current landscape.
“Japan has become a poor country,” he told This Week in Asia at the organisation’s offices. Nearby, in a park that’s become synonymous with the city’s sex trade, young women wait for customers before the sun has even set.
Tanaka’s organisation noticed an increasing number of foreigners frequenting the park as soon as pandemic-era travel restrictions were dropped.
“But now we are seeing a lot more foreign men,” he said. “They come from many countries. They are white, Asian, black – but the majority are Chinese.”
This influx has coincided with a troubling rise in teenagers and women in their early twenties turning to the sex industry to survive, Tanaka said, alongside an alarming increase in violence.
A park in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district in Tokyo has become a hotbed of sexual activity, with men wandering the area, eyes darting around in search of the perfect candidate with whom to fulfill their desires, as reported in Japan Times.
At Okubo Park, there are no pimps — just men, including foreign nationals, looking for paid sex and young women there to give it. By 8 p.m., there were around 30 women waiting to be called on.
“Are you standing?” a man asks one of the women, using a euphemism for prostitution. If the price is too high, the man will either walk away or try to bargain for a lower rate.
A few of them have cameras, trying to sneak a picture of the girls. Others livestream the scene on social media, showing what kind of women are available at the park. One video uploaded on X last year garnered around 12,000 likes.
Similar clips in foreign languages are also on TikTok and other social media platforms, including Xiaohongshu, the Chinese equivalent of Instagram, tempting foreign residents and tourists to the area.
An older man approaches a woman near Okubo Park in Tokyo, presumably to solicit sexual services. Photo: Eric Fior
The park in Kabukicho has become a notorious hot spot for unregulated street prostitution, some of which involves minors engaging in unprotected sex. Violence and harassment are prevalent, making the area increasingly unsafe — a stark contrast to Japan's image as a safe country.
In the past, Japanese men used to be criticized for going to South-East Asia for sex. Now, it appears to be the other way around, with foreign tourists and residents flocking to the area, fueled by a weak yen, robust inbound tourism and social media posts.
“Okubo Park is becoming part of the tourism experience for foreign visitors,” said Kazuna Kanajiri, a representative of Paps, a nonprofit that offers support to victims of sexual violence.
Foreign tourists at times come in groups accompanied by an interpreter to help them negotiate. Some girls prefer foreign nationals, fearing that Japanese customers may turn out to be undercover police officers.
“In Kabukicho, anyone (women) walking around is approached by people trying to recruit them for sexual activities. And yet there is no effective measure in place to address this situation,” Kanajiri said.
Lawmakers are aware of what’s happening at Okubo Park, and worry that it may damage Japan’s reputation across the globe.
“The reality is that Japan has become a country where foreign men can obtain young women and essentially buy sexual services,” said Kazunori Yamanoi of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, the country's main opposition party. He has long advocated for laws regulating the sex-work industry.
“This is no longer just a domestic issue," he said. "It's a very serious problem regarding how Japanese women are perceived in the international community.”
Police have been cracking down on the neighborhood — a well-known red-light district — with 140 women arrested for alleged street prostitution in 2023.
While financial misfortunes during the Covid-19 pandemic may have driven some of these women to work the streets, others simply want more money to spend — or to use to pay off their debts — at host clubs.
At such establishments, where male entertainers flirt with female customers over food and drink, there are malicious schemes designed to trap the women into an endless cycle of debt that ultimately push them toward prostitution. Those host clubs have been linked to an increase in sex work, including illegal operations overseas and street solicitors.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), around 43% of women arrested while working the street in 2023 said they started selling their body to pay for host clubs and underground male idols. About 80% of those arrested were in their 20s, while three were 19 or younger.
“I wasn't making enough money at the sōpurando (soapland, a bathhouse that offers sexual services) to spend on the host. Then the host told me to work as a street prostitute near the host club. I wanted him to like me so I started doing street prostitution as told to earn money,” one testimony in an MPD report said.
The average price per session is around ¥20,000, but this can be lowered to ¥15,000 if business is slow. Some workers have a quota they need to meet each day to pay back their host club debts.
A Japan Times reporter on assignment witnessed several sex workers going straight to host clubs after working on the street and then heading back to the park again to earn more cash after the clubs closed at around 1 a.m. In Kabukicho alone, there are around 240 to 260 host clubs, according to Yuichi Hojo, the representative of Japan Host Club Association.
Sex workers face many dangers, including physical violence, extortion and sexually transmitted diseases.
Miya, who uses a pseudonym, said that customers often become violent. A friend was physically beaten by a foreign customer, who demanded she return half of the money he paid because he could not reach orgasm.
Since her friend didn’t want to risk being arrested, she called Miya for help instead. When they ran away from the man, he kicked Miya in the back and chased them, refusing to stop until Miya's friend returned the money.
“My friend ended up giving the money back because he would not drop it,” Miya said. She also chose not to file a criminal complaint against the man for kicking her, saying there was little chance she would see justice.
Yuriko Ueki, who heads the MPD’s adult entertainment division, said that even if the anti-prostitution law doesn't apply to buyers of sex, arrests can still be made for acts of violence.
“We will ensure that violence does not go unchecked. To that end, it is crucial that we make it easier for related organizations, as well as individuals, to consult with the police and report such incidents,” she said during a briefing to CDP lawmakers.
Some people feel that police officers focus more on cracking down on street prostitution, not the violence perpetrated against the women.
Yoshihide Tanaka, a secretary at nonprofit group Seiboren, which advocates for crackdowns on the host club industry, spoke recently about a woman who often visited the group's office, and on one day in late September ran in, with an apparent injury to her head, seeking help.
According to Tanaka, the woman, who works as a sex worker on the street, claimed that a customer from China had physically assaulted her. The group took her to a hospital, where they were told to go to a larger facility for a CT scan.
The woman decided to file a criminal complaint against the customer, in light of the severity of the assault, without disclosing that she was a sex worker. However, police officers questioned her instead, in apparent aim to arrest her for being engaged in sex work, said Tanaka.
But why do some women resort to street sex work even though the risks are so high? The answer is deceptively simple — it pays better.
Women can earn more working the streets than at sex service stores and they can set their own terms. It also allows underage girls, including runaways, to earn some quick cash, since sex establishments would turn them down.
Support groups and lawmakers say legal loopholes are to blame for what's happening.
In Japan, buying and selling sex for money is illegal, but the ban is limited to penetration only. The anti-prostitution law imposes a criminal punishment of up to six months in prison and a fine of up to ¥10,000, but only for the seller and not the buyer.
This means that if a man pays for sex at Okubo Park, the sex worker would be criminally liable but the man wouldn't.
Kanajiri of the nonproft Paps said that in order to regulate the area, it is imperative to impose penalties on those who purchase sex.
Dubbed the “Nordic model,” after laws first adopted in Sweden, Kanajiri advocated for imposing criminal punishments on buyers of sex instead of the sellers.
The system would allow women to safely report violent customers while simultaneously reducing demand for sexual services.
A few years ago, the focus of prostitution had centered on women and young girls who could not reach out for help quitting the lifestyle for fear of arrest.
But instead of leaving these women to fend for themselves, the CDP’s Yamanoi says the government should do more to help.
“The issue lies in the fact that the Japanese government and the police are not sufficiently cracking down or putting enough safeguards in place,” said Yamanoi, who has visited Okubo Park multiple times and listened to women’s accounts.
“We can’t have them do it at their own risk. We need to regulate it strictly by law.”
