How many of the 700,000 to 4 million global victims of human trafficking a year (according to a 2002 U.S. State Department survey) end up in Japan?
Given the secretive nature of the trade, nobody knows for sure, but the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration estimates that, at any one time, the estimated 2.37 trillion yen-a-year Japanese sex industry (according to Takashi Kadokura of the Tokyo-based Dai-ichi Life Research Institute) involves as many as 150,000 foreign women, many of whom are coerced or lured here under false pretenses.
Pushed out by poverty and high unemployment back home, the women come mainly from the Philippines and Thailand, and increasingly from the crumbling economies of Colombia and Eastern Europe. Most are recruited locally to work in nonspecified "entertainment" jobs. Many arrive here legally, including, for example, about 10,500 Filipinas who entered last year on entertainment visas, while others come from countries such as Colombia, whose citizens do not need a visa to get into Japan, but whose passports are stamped at the port of entry with a 90-day visitors' visa. (From this month, however, the government is advising, but not requiring, Colombians to obtain a visa prior to leaving their home country.)