Analysis of prostitution in Japan

Abstract

Before World War II, we witnessed the purification movement, on which Christian groups embarked as moral entrepreneurs. After the war, female groups took the initiative in a movement for anti‐prostitution law. The movement resulted in the enactment of the Prostitution Prevention Law in 1956, which made prostitution a punishable criminal offense. On the other hand, in the United States in the 1960s, some criminologists advocated the necessity of de‐criminalization of victimless crimes, one of which was prostitution. Some groups of feminists also insisted on the de‐criminalization of prostitution to emancipate women toward a freer and more liberated sexuality. New ideas regarding the control, or lack thereof, of prostitution were then introduced into Japan — a country where decriminalization was not realized in the dimension of criminal laws. With its rapid economic growth, Japan became a consumer's society, in which the demand for prostitution increased. In response to this trend, more prostitutes committe...