Japan cracks down on vice clubs forcing women customers into sex work

Activists applauded the police action, but said authorities could have acted much sooner to crack down on the problem – and cautioned that much more needs to be done to halt the international trafficking of women.

“It is good that the police are finally taking notice of this problem, but it really should have been addressed a long time ago,” Yoshihide Tanaka, secretary general of the Liaison Council of Parents Protecting Youths (Seiboren), told This Week in Asia.

“The sex industry has for many years had close connections with the police, who have too often been reluctant to intervene, but now because of the actions of groups such as ours and the media coverage, that is changing.”

Yoshihiko Usui, a 53-year-old broker, is accused of introducing two women to sex industry contacts in the US last year. The women worked in brothels, with one reportedly being paid 900,000 yen (US$6,000) for the work over 10 days and the other 2.5 million yen in the space of a month.

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How Japanese women are driven into debt and sex work by host clubs

Authorities believe the group raked in around 200 million yen (US$1.32 million) by passing the women on to contacts abroad.

Japanese police were alerted to the group after US authorities identified in April last year unusually large numbers of women attempting to enter US airports and questioned them on suspicion of prostitution links. American police later flagged their suspicions over the “Dekasegi Charme” website to their Japanese counterparts.

The same day as the arrests were announced, Japanese authorities revealed police had raided 729 host clubs in November and December in search of violations of the anti-prostitution law, the employment security law and the adult entertainment business law.

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