Japan panel urges penalties for sex buyers

A Japanese legal experts' panel recommended on Thursday that the country change its prostitution law to punish people who seek to buy sex, a proposal expected to lead to amendments to the decades-old legislation.

Under current rules, street sex workers can face fines or imprisonment for public solicitation, but customers are not punished. The panel called for ending that imbalance by penalising clients for solicitation in public and online.

The panel said acts such as negotiating paid sex in public and loitering on the street to “browse” sex workers should be punishable.

Some campaigners have urged Japan to adopt a “Nordic model” that decriminalises selling sex while criminalising paying for it, as in countries including Sweden, Norway and France. The panel did not recommend fully decriminalising sex work or changing the definition of prostitution to include acts beyond vaginal intercourse.

Risa, a member of the sex trade survivor group Toka who uses a pseudonym, said laws that continue to target sellers would make them afraid to report violence to police. She said poverty, trauma and disability push many women into the sex trade and challenged the idea that participation is freely chosen.

Nao, another Toka member who uses a pseudonym, said she turned to street prostitution as a teenager after fleeing abuse and living under a bridge. She said she now sees herself as a victim of sexual exploitation.

Opinions are split on whether criminalising customers would reduce street prostitution. Ronald Weitzer, a professor emeritus at George Washington University, predicted it would “push commercial sex underground”.

Lawyer Sho Wakabayashi told the panel that Japan's adult industry involves an estimated more than two million women and makes roughly two trillion to five trillion yen a year. Yumeno Nito, founder of the youth protection group Colabo, called for publicly funded specialised support for people who need help leaving the sex industry.