Barun Roy: Cleaning up a dirty business

ASIA FILE

At long last, Tokyo seems to be making some effort to clean up its "Dirty Japanese" image abroad. A US State Department report published last June named Japan as one of the countries not doing enough to curb trafficking in women, and Tokyo is shaken by the accusation. It has until next June to take steps to have its name removed from the US list.

One of its first steps was to send a mission to the Philippines, where most of Japan's "sex slaves" are believed to come from. The purpose was to warn Manila that Tokyo was going to tighten visa rules for foreign dancers and singers from next year and ask it to ensure that only genuine entertainers are accredited.

Dancers and singers have an edge in obtaining Japanese visas, but once they enter the country, many of them end up working, under threat from their agents, as hostesses in bars and clubs catering to Japanese men.

Last year alone, some 130,000 foreigners were granted visas by Japan to go and work there as entertainers. About 80,000 of them were Filipinos while women from Russia, Romania and the Ukraine made up a sizeable portion of the rest.

Over half of all who came were working in hostess and karaoke bars "" there are thousands of them all over the country "" serving workaholic businessmen, while quite a few were forced into prostitution.

But one wonders if visa restrictions alone will be enough to control this aspect of the Japanese sex trade. Of course, the government has set up a liaison group comprising several ministries and agencies to deal with the problem and will ask the Diet to ratify a United Nations protocol to prevent human trafficking at its next general session.

It has also initiated a drive to go after overstaying aliens. But how much can such moves actually achieve in a country where there's no comprehensive law against human trafficking and penalties are usually light, where sex has become a $13 billion-a-year business, and an evening out in the company of hostesses is an established daily tradition?

Japanese soldiers' sexual exploitation of women in the countries it occupied during the Second World War is well known and documented. It was then that the term "Dirty Japanese" first came into popular usage around the world and the image has stuck ever since.

Japan doesn't send out soldiers any more, but Japanese tourists go out in huge numbers looking as much for clean beaches as for good sex. At home, the bars and brothels of Tokyo, too numerous to control, remain a funnel through which women from other countries looking for quick riches are being constantly sucked in.

In reality, however, they don't make big bucks and the lines between entertainment and hostessing is blurred. "Japayuki," meaning foreign prostitutes in Japan, is how Filipino dancers and singers are popularly known.

Even those who go as maids are often victims of abuse, sexual slavery, prostitution and a shocking lack of compassion.

But the irony of the whole thing is, there's no dearth of Filipino women wanting to go to Japan, because even the slave wage they earn there is better than what they could make at home.

Agents are always on the prowl in the poorer regions of the country and parents themselves often want their daughters recruited because of the money they could potentially earn. Recruits are brought to Manila to be housed and "trained" while their papers are being processed.

At Japan's prodding, the Philippines government is trying to introduce some discipline and transparency into the paper processing system. Even so, it wouldn't like to kill the golden goose altogether.

Entertainment "export" pumps over $ 2 billion into the Philippine economy yearly "" out of the total annual inward remittance from overseas Filipino workers of some $ 7.6 billion "" and the 180,000 Filipino entertainers in Japan alone sent home about $ 250 million last year.

The government won't want this flow to dry off, or even dwindle significantly.

Previously, performers used to get a yellow accreditation card that could be easily tampered. They now apply for and obtain what's known as the ARB, or Artist Record Book, which attests to the performer's particular competence and mentions his or her name, birthday, colour of eyes, height and weight.

It's a kind of passport that the artist uses to obtain overseas job contracts and visas. In future, they might have to obtain another kind of accreditation containing also their biometric details.

But will that solve the problem of illegal recruitment? As it is now, ARBs with falsified information can be obtained by anyone willing to pay the assessors under the table.

Caught between a thriving overseas market and burgeoning inward remittances, how far is Manila prepared to go to clean up its own house?