TOKYO: Japan should overhaul its prostitution law to punish those who seek to buy sex, experts recommended on Thursday in proposals likely to lead to changes to the decades-old legislation.
Currently, street sex workers face fines or imprisonment for public solicitation, but their customers face no punishment, making Japan an outlier among developed countries.
Calling for the abolition of this asymmetry, the panel of legal experts proposed in a report that clients also be penalised for solicitation both in public and online. It is seen as almost certain that the justice ministry will make legal amendments based on the panel’s conclusions.
Acts such as negotiating paid sex in public and loitering on the street to “browse” sex workers should be considered punishable, the panel said. Some campaigners have demanded a “Nordic model” that decriminalises selling sex while criminalising paying for it — adopted by countries like Sweden, Norway and France.
However, the panel did not recommend decriminalising sex work altogether or redefining prostitution to include acts beyond vaginal intercourse. Some sellers, the panel said, “willingly” joined the sex trade and their solicitation “disrupts social order”.
Risa, a member of the sex trade survivor group Toka ( “Light “), said if the laws continue to target sellers, “they won’t be able to report violence and other terrible experiences to police, for fear of being labelled criminals”.
The concept of free will in sex work is a myth given that compounding difficulties like poverty, trauma and disability push many women into the trade.—AFP