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The story
A panel of experts convened by the Justice Ministry has put forward a draft report proposing that soliciting to buy sex also be made a punishable offense, expanding penalties to cover the ‘buying side’ of prostitution. In Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward, around the Kabukicho entertainment district, the number of foreign tourists visiting for the purpose of buying sex has been rising — with a total of 112 women arrested on the spot last year alone for soliciting customers around Okubo Park. On 5channel, users debated how effective such regulations would actually be, along with comparisons to cases overseas and differences between Tokyo and other regions.
On the 24th, a Justice Ministry expert panel presented a draft report proposing that penalties for prostitution be expanded to cover the soliciting activity of the ‘buying side’ as well. From Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward — home to Kabukicho, one of Japan’s largest entertainment districts — have come calls for effective countermeasures, citing an increase in foreign tourists visiting the area to buy sex.
According to the ward office, since the COVID-19 pandemic, women have increasingly been seen standing on the streets around the ward-run Okubo Park near Kabukicho. Images of them waiting for customers have spread overseas via social media, drawing a growing number of foreign visitors who come either to buy sex or simply to watch. Money disputes have also arisen due to language barriers.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, a total of 112 women were arrested on the spot last year on suspicion of violating the Anti-Prostitution Law for soliciting customers around the park. Following an intensive crackdown last August, the number of women standing near the park declined, but many have since been seen waiting for customers in the surrounding hotel district instead.
Source: yomiuri.co.jp / Read the original article
What people said
Guess now it's the opposite — Japanese women getting bought by Indonesian or Thai guys?
Yeah, exactly this.
Just like with illegal drugs, they should crack down on the sellers…
Japanese people's purchasing power is weak.
Turns out foreigners don't have that much purchasing power either, huh
Compared to Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka barely register.
In terms of number of prostitutes, Tokyo is way out in front lol
Tons of prostitutes come up from Osaka and Fukuoka, but apparently a lot gets deducted from their pay and the agencies running them are trash.
Their accents keep them from becoming popular girls, but the workload's lighter, so I guess it balances out
Wonder if those guys have dropped that pathetic pride of theirs by now?
> Japan would become a country where Japanese women sell themselves to foreigners
You say that like it wasn't already the case before.
Ever heard of the karayuki-san? (Japanese women sent abroad to work as prostitutes in the Meiji/Taisho era)
So many Japanese women went to America to work as prostitutes that it became a real problem, and now it's harder for Japanese women to get into the US at all.
Rise in Japanese women denied entry over 'suspected prostitution' — even ordinary office workers and students held up… driven by the fallout from sex workers going abroad for work
https://www.ben54.jp/news/3030
But when you check whether those welfare fees and taxes are actually being paid, nope, not at all —
the girls are basically covering the shop's taxes and staff welfare costs out of their own pocket
Apparently Kaike (a hot spring town in Tottori) pays out the biggest cut in all of Japan
In Tokyo it's just regular people running things, and simply being yakuza doesn't strip you of your rights there — Tokyo runs on a different system
Nah, Tokyo is a yakuza town too — Kabukicho itself is Sumiyoshi-kai turf.
Go look at the Sanja Matsuri festival sometime — you'd be shocked how many yakuza show up lol
Kabukicho is basically western Japan's culture transplanted there. Streets like Ebi-dori are lined with late-night ramen shops screaming 'Kyushu!' 'Hakata!' 'The real deal, Kumamoto!'
Even Yoshimoto (the Osaka-based comedy agency) has a theater in Kabukicho
Kabukicho is Tokyo's culture, though. Sumiyoshi-kai is a Tokyo yakuza group too.
Yoshiwara's been a prostitution district since the Edo period lol
Background and Key Points
Japan’s Anti-Prostitution Law (売春防止法), enacted in 1956, has always been asymmetric: the act of prostitution itself is not directly criminalized, but soliciting by the seller is. The buyer’s side has essentially gone unpunished except in narrow circumstances, which is exactly the gap this Justice Ministry panel is now trying to close. Okubo Park, cited in the article, sits in the Kabukicho entertainment district — one of Asia’s largest nightlife zones, historically tied to organized crime (the Sumiyoshi-kai, a major yakuza syndicate, as posters note). The pandemic-era shift to street solicitation there, later amplified by social media, is a relatively recent and visible phenomenon, distinct from the district’s older, more discreet sex-trade infrastructure.
The thread didn’t split over whether the problem is real, but over where enforcement should target: several posters argued that punishing buyers is pointless without also crushing the supply side (“if there’s no one selling, buyers won’t come”), likening it to narcotics enforcement, while others focused on regional structural differences — claiming Tokyo’s sex trade is more “civilian-run” while Osaka, Fukuoka, and Hiroshima’s is yakuza-backed, a claim other posters directly disputed.
What outsiders likely miss is the historical mirror image raised in the thread itself: Japanese women working abroad as sex workers is not new — the Meiji-era karayuki-san phenomenon, and more recently, documented cases of Japanese women being denied U.S. entry over suspected sex work, per the linked Ben54 article. That reversal — Japan as both source and destination for cross-border sex tourism — rarely makes it into English-language coverage of the Kabukicho story.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Breaking News+) thread “Rise in tourists visiting Japan ‘to buy sex’ — hopes that punishing solicitation by buyers will deter it: ‘public order has badly deteriorated’.”
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