The sex trade: women pay for national debts

Part 1 — Women’s Stories

Japan

The sex trade: women pay for national debts

This article is taken from an audio-visual entitled Reaping the whirlwind: the importation of women into Japan. Reprinted with the permission of the Christian Conference of Asia, Singapore.

During November 1983, a cabaret named "Upper Lima," located in the Okinawan City of Kimu, burned to the ground. Two female dancers of Philippine extraction died in the raging flames. These two women cried out for help from behind iron-barred windows as they sought refuge from the merciless heat. While neither the victims nor their relatives received any compensation whatsoever, all indications are that this same cabaret has been lavishly reconstructed, using insurance monies. It seems that the management is doing quite well and introducing new women dancers from The Philippines.

In April 1983, the naked body of a Taiwanese woman was discovered in a forest in Gunma prefecture, Japan. It appears that she was being used as a prostitute by the management of a pub in nearby Kumagaya City. The crime was, in all likelihood, perpetrated by a male customer of the pub, but no one has been arrested.

In March 1984, a Korean woman employed in a Korean club in southern Osaka, Japan, jumped to her death from a fourth floor window. She took her own life just after investigations were initiated by heavy-handed Japanese immigration officers. She deemed it better to die rather than be deported in shame. At the time of her death she was wearing her own chima chogori, the traditional dress of Korea.

In August 1983, the owner of a pub/restaurant, who lived in the Taito district of Tokyo, was stabbed by a hostess who had been imported from Thailand. Her motive was an emotionally painful involvement in a triangular relationship and the constant cruelty inflicted upon her by her manager.

All over Japan, from Hokkaido in the extreme north to Okinawa in the extreme south, non-Japanese Asian women are to be seen in increasing numbers. There are probably more than 100,000 such women presently struggling to survive in these pitiless economic jungles. How do these women come to Japan? Sometimes cabarets, bars, and hotels place orders for them. They are usually sought through certain shady "recruitment agencies" or so-called "production and promotion" organisations. In other instances, these women become commodity samples in photographic catalogues that are sent by these very same agencies to their shady clientele. Officially, these women are brought into Japan as singers or dancers, but their economic value

is determined by their youthfulness and conformity to crass, popular-culture standards of beauty. In many cases their first experiences in Japan include being auctioned off in competitive bidding at a "flesh market".

Immediately after their arrival at Narita airport, they are brought to a certain hotel in the Ueno area of Tokyo to be sold at prices ranging between 800 and 3000 US dollars per head. Other women, priced much lower, are sent to Okinawa to entertain American GIs.

In spite of health complications, like jet lag and the extreme fatigue of international travel, these women are put to work immediately upon their arrival in Japan. They are forced to wear new dresses purchased with funds that are later taken from their meagre salaries, and they are painted with stage cosmetics. As a special service to their male customers, are made to sing Japanese songs, which they learned before they came — in the imported pop culture atmospheres of their native lands. They are forced to work from dusk till dawn, or about twelve hours each day. There are no holidays allowed. Lucia from The Philippines said, "I worked in Choshi in Chiba prefecture for four months and never had a single holiday. My only holiday was my last day in Japan. I wanted to go shopping but I didn't know where to go. Besides, I was too tired. So I spent the whole day sleeping." Lulu came to Japan with the understanding that she would work as a singer. But she was actually employed as a hostess. She said: "what I hate most is a customer touching my body repeatedly. If I express my feelings of dislike, the manager scolds me".

Often these imported women are forced to work as prostitutes. A manager said: "it is risky to allow them to work as prostitutes every night. But I can make more than 320 dollars per girl per month by making them submit to prostitution once a week. It's much more profitable than selling drinks, you know".

Typically, imported women live in overcrowded conditions — in one case, ten of them sleep on four futon mattresses in a one-bedroom apartment. The only pieces of furniture are a television set for learning Japanese songs, a table, a couple of chairs, and a refrigerator. Since there are no dishes, they must eat food with spoons directly from a cooking pan. At six o'clock in the evening, a micro-bus comes to pick them up. They are then returned to the apartment at six-thirty the next morning, completely exhausted. They have nothing to enjoy but sleep. They have no idea exactly where in the city they live, for they only go back and forth between the club and their apartment.

As soon as the women arrive in Japan, a man from the "recruitment agency" confiscates their passports. In many cases their wages are not paid until just before their departure from Japan. Without money or passport, they cannot escape even if they want to. They receive the equivalent of between two and four US dollars each day, which is barely sufficient to purchase one meal outside.

Japanese winters are severe. Northern Japan is covered with snow, and temperatures remain below zero between December and March. Tim, from Bangkok, was found lying curled up in order to keep warm in a unheated room. She was wearing all of the clothes she had purchased ever since she came to Japan, plus a pair of gloves. If these women become sick due to the cold weather, the long hours and the strenuous working conditions, or the

poor nourishment, their employers do not lift a hand in their care. Since the women speak no Japanese and have no health insurance, they cannot go to a doctor even if they are in dire need of medical attention.

The so-called "sex show nude dancers", who perform the act of sexual intercourse with customers on a stage while other customers watch, take on about twenty patrons each day. They are forced to sleep back stage and are moved from place to place every ten days. A Filipina was brought to Japan under a false pretence contract to work as a dancer. But on the occasion of her initial performance, she was raped on stage by many customers. Several Filipino women were sent as prostitutes to a dam construction site in the Kansai area. A day labourer returning to Kamagasaki from the site said, "we day labourers are able to come out of that hell alive. But I feel sorry for those Filipinas. I am sure that they will be thrown out when they become useless".

Gangsters obtain large amounts of money by trading in women, as well as through smuggling drugs and weapons. In The Philippines, about 200 Japanese Yakuza gangsters live in Manila doing their underground business while the local police look on in silence. This is the so-called "Manila connection". These gangsters purchase women for $ US 2000 and sell them for $ US 6000.

In Thailand, women are recruited by secret organisations composed of Thais and Japanese residents. They provide fake passports and air tickets to the recruited women and charge them $ US 2400 each as an introduction fee. Recruited women have to remit this amount of money to their recruiters within two months of their arrival in Japan.

Some women come as wives of Japanese men, arranging false marriages. In such cases, the men who allow the use of their household registers in this way receive a considerable amount of money. A woman from Taiwan found it necessary to pay $ US 2000 for a false marriage arrangement and has continued monthly payments of $ US 600 ever since.

Usually, imported women receive between $ US 300 and $ US 550 each per month as salary. However, after subtracting payments for initial loans, rent and food, not much money remains in their hands. In order to enter Japan properly, women are supposed to obtain valid passports from their own governments and duly-applied-for visas from their respective Japanese embassies. In spite of these requirements they are brought, and come, to Japan illegally. Lupita came to Japan with a tourist visa. After the initial thirty days of legal stay ran out, she found it necessary to purchase a fake passport and visa, for which she paid $ US 800. When she was finally arrested by immigration officers, she was completely out of funds.

The immigration laws of Japan stipulate punishment and eventual deportation of women for: possessing fake passports; engaging in activities outside designated visa restrictions; and staying after visa expiration dates have passed. There are no laws in Japan that punish the men who have been treating these persons as commodities and making fortunes by using them.

Upon liberalisation of international travel conditions, the number of young women entering Japan from other Asian countries has increased. For example, the number of Filipinas increased rapidly after 1981. The number of arrests by Japanese authorities due to illegal overstays and visa restriction

violations has increased rapidly as well. In 1983, the number of arrests was 2339. Out of this, women from The Philippines numbered 1012, followed in order by women from Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea. Combined, these countries provided ninety per cent of the total. Most of these women were hostesses and strippers.

On August 6, 1984, a battered woman covered with wounds and bruised from head to toe came to the Philippine embassy in Tokyo seeking protection from her merciless tormentors. Many hundreds of the imported women suffer this kind of violence at the hands of their employers. Women entering Japan as entertainers have contracts with their employers. These contracts, which specify only the name, birth date, and address of the employee, lack the normal description of working conditions and types of compensation.

No matter how cruelly they may be treated, women brought to Japan from other Asian countries almost never go to the police for help. They are made fully aware of the fact that they are working illegally and that their passports are in their employers' hands. Even though they leave Japan vowing never to return, they usually return within a year. Why do they come back again and again?

During the Vietnam war, entertainment businesses catering to American GIs prospered in Okinawa, South Korea, Taiwan, The Philippines, and Thailand. That war ended in 1975, and the American soldiers were replaced by sex tourists from Germany, The Netherlands . . . from Australia and Japan. This same prostitution tourism began to spread to Taiwan and South Korea, where the Japanese language is spoken and understood—as a result of Japan's ill-fated colonial period. The sex trade intruded into The Philippines and Thailand. Because of Japan's period of high economic growth during the 1960s and 1970s, newly rich Japanese men began climbing aboard jumbo jets by the thousands in search of ego gratification at the expense of women in poor developing countries.

Noi, a go-go dancer, said: "Japanese men come on Japanese airplanes, they stay in Japanese hotels, and eat in Japanese restaurants. There is nothing that benefits Thailand".

Having once been invaded and violated by the Japanese military, the people of Asia look at the behaviour of these men very critically. Professor Constantino of the University of The Philippines describes the Japanese presence as nothing more than "imperial soldiers in civilian clothes".

Korean women began to protest against prostitution tourism in 1973. Immediately after that, Japanese women also began protesting. In January of 1981 women in The Philippines and Thailand began protesting. These voices were raised in the hope that the then Japanese Prime Minister Suzuki, on a tour of ASEAN countries, might hear and heed.

Today there are concerned citizens' groups that are trying to open shelters for sexually exploited Asian women in Manila, Bangkok, Tokyo and Osaka. As criticism of prostitution tourism rose to a crescendo, the number of Japanese men visiting other Asian countries for purposes of sexual gratification decreased. But the number of women from these same countries entering Japan to work as prostitutes greatly increased.

The poverty-stricken women of Asia are trying to survive by selling their

bodies. The Philippines and Thailand both retain fertile land and a wealth of resources. Why then, are these women so poor? In the so-called developing countries, both in rural and urban areas, unequal modernisation is being promoted through the co-operation of military governments and foreign venture capital. As a result, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened even more rapidly; urban populations have grown explosively, and the number of unemployed and underemployed people has increased, thereby swelling the slums in size and number. At the same time, external debt levels for developing nations have greatly increased. In order to solve these problems, the respective governments promote tourism and the export of human labour.

In South Korea, former President Park ran a huge campaign aimed at receiving one million tourists. One of the great attractions for tourists, however, is sex. The Minister of Education praised the Korean hospitality girls for their love of their country as seen in their giving of themselves for the sake of increased foreign exchange earnings. In The Philippines and Thailand the number of tourists has been increasing as a result of governmental promotions. Many five-star hotels have been constructed for such purposes, with the aid of foreign venture capital.

Unbelievable numbers of Asians are working overseas. South Korea and Thailand send out more than two hundred thousand workers every year. The Philippines has exported more than one million workers to 120 countries around the world, and included in this number are 250,000 women. These people go overseas because salaries in other countries are several times higher than in their own countries. However, they are usually employed as maids, night-shift nurses and hostesses, and must function under severe working conditions. More often than not, they are sexually exploited as well.

Overseas workers from South Korea and The Philippines are required by their governments to remit through state banks a certain percentage of their wages. In 1983, this remittance from overseas provided the largest portion of Philippine foreign exchange earnings in any category, reaching more than one billion dollars. The success of this formula for earning foreign exchange, through the export of cheap labour as a commodity, becomes possible only when there are rich countries that are willing to purchase this labour.

In the summer of 1984, a rumour was spread in the vicinity of a public swimming pool in Nagano prefecture, Japan, "that venereal disease could be caught by swimming in the pool as it had also been used by Asian prostitutes". Mothers stopped their children from going and the number of people using the pool decreased by more than half. There was no criticism of the Japanese men who were the original cause of these women's presence.

Japanese men frequently visit sex dispensing establishments. They also are repressed and alienated by the powerful, pervasive and systematic control over their lives that exists in Japanese society. As a result, they try to gain some release from this stress through sexual encounters of every conceivable kind. On the other hand, Japanese wives put up with their husbands going to sex establishments, persuading themselves that it is better to do so if they want to keep peace in the family. As material prosperity increases, spiritual deterioration becomes more rampant.