Police took action against 40 people for human trafficking offenses including forced prostitution last year, up by 10 from a year earlier, official data showed Thursday. The 40 suspects included those involved with crime syndicates and in the adult entertainment business. The number of human trafficking ...
Should the world's oldest profession be legal?
As Amnesty Interational has pointed out, criminalizing the sex industry does far more harm than good.
Sex trade a shaky safety net for Japan's working-poor women
For the past six years, 47-year-old single mother Kasumi Endo has lived a double life. On weekdays, she works all day as a temp-staff office worker to raise her teenage daughter. But with wages hardly sufficient to keep the household afloat, Endo (not her real ...
Tokyo exhibition focuses on plight of sexually exploited girls
In Japan, teenage girls who turn to prostitution do so because they want to make easy money or fulfill their own pleasures. Or not really. Contrary to popular stereotypes, "few girls I've seen began prostituting themselves light-heartedly or to earn easy money," said Yumeno Nito, a ...
A Thai woman and a Chinese female operator of a sex parlor in Tokyo have been arrested for allegedly arranging for another Thai woman overstaying in Japan to provide sexual services, police said Friday. Onuma Phitchapha, 35, and Yu Xiaomei, the 43-year-old sex parlor operator, ...
Keep it clean: World watches Iceland lead the way toward ban on Web porn
Small, volcanic, with a proud Viking heritage and run by an openly gay prime minister, Iceland is now considering becoming the first democracy in the Western world to try to ban online pornography. A nationwide consultation has found wide support for the move from police ...
Law bends over backward to allow 'fuzoku'
Some desires money can't gratify, but for appetites of the flesh, there are ways in Japan to legally sate one's carnal cravings. Like many countries, prostitution is illegal in Japan, at least on paper. Brothel-like "soapland" and sexual massage parlors get around these barriers. And the ...
