No selling should also mean no buying, expert panel says.

Common sense would suggest that if there’s something that’s been judged as unacceptable enough within a society for there to be a blanket ban on its sale, that buying it should be illegal too, right? Like, if the law says that “Under no circumstances can Godzilla eggs be sold,” it doesn’t seem like there’s any logical scenario in which it would be OK to purchase them.

And yet, in one of the many ways that Godzilla eggs and sexual intercourse are different, the Japanese legal system doesn’t handle buying sex the same as it does selling sex, as one is explicitly outlawed, and the other carries no legal penalty whatsoever. That loophole could be closing soon, though, and foreign tourists might be playing a role in the proposed revision.

Under Japan’s current Prostitution Prevention Law, only the selling of intercourse is treated as a criminal act. So if Person A pays Person B for a role in the hay, Person B is looking at up to six months in jail or a fine of up to 20,000 yen (US$125) if they get caught. Meanwhile, Person A hasn’t broken any law, and therefore faces no legal repercussion as long as they didn’t commit any other wrongdoing (such as sex with a minor, coercion, or physical assault).

As we discussed earlier this year, the Japanese government’s Ministry of Justice has come to feel like this imbalance is both unfair and ineffective, and assembled a panel of experts to discuss what changes need to be made. This week, the panel previewed its recommendations in a draft report, in which it says the members are in consensus that prostitution purchasers should be punished as well.

The proposal follows recent attempts by Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward to reduce prostitution within its section of the city, which includes the Kabukicho entertainment and red light district. Since the end of the pandemic, there’s been a noticeable increase in the number of streetwalkers on roads near a park and love hotel district close to Shinjuku Station. Ward administrators say that social media videos showing women loitering on the streets as they wait for customers looking to purchase sex have been attracting increasing amounts of attention overseas, leading to an increase in foreign tourists coming to the area to purchase the prostitutes’ services themselves or to gawk at the selection on display. In response, local citizens’ groups have begun public awareness patrols broadcasting announcements that “Prostitution is a crime” in both Japanese and English.

Though not the sole impetus for the proposed revisions, an unwanted increase in foreign sex tourists is one more reason to tighten the law. In addition to introducing penalties for purchasers, some on the panel also recommend raising the penalties for selling sex, saying that the current penalties are insufficient to dissuade prostitutes from offering their services. At the same time, the panel recognizes that increased penalties could carry the risk of driving prostitution further underground, increasing the dangers faced by those working within the industry if they feel unable to come forward to the police if customers or controllers become violent, and that efforts should be made to help those who see prostitution as their only means of making a living to obtain the economic and social support they need to transition to more lawful occupations.

The panel’s final report could be completed as soon as next month, which would allow legislation to criminalize paying for prostitution as early as the next session of the Diet (Japanese parliament), which is slated to start in late September.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun (1, 2), Jiji
Top image: Pakutaso
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