Global Issues

Japan

• Destination, source, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking.

• Women and children from East Asia, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Russia, South America, and Latin America who travel to Japan for employment or fraudulent marriage forced into prostitution.

• Reported growth in trafficking of Japanese nationals, including foreign-born children of Japanese citizens who acquired nationality.

• Traffickers use fraudulent marriages between foreign women and Japanese men to facilitate the entry into Japan for forced prostitution.

• Government and NGOs reported increase in the number of children as victims of trafficking.

• Japanese organized crime syndicates (the Yakuza) believed to play a significant role in trafficking in Japan, both directly and indirectly.

•  Victims of forced prostitution sometimes face debts upon commencement of their contracts as high as $50,000.

• Transit country for persons trafficked from East Asia to North America.

• Japanese men a source of demand for child-sex tourism in Southeast Asia.

• 12.9% of women in Japan report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 6.2% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

• 18.5% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner sexual and/or physical violence in their lifetime.

• 0.4% report forced first sex.

• 1.2% report abuse during pregnancy.

 

Advocacy:

• Authorities produced manual entitled, “How to Treat Human Trafficking Cases: Measures Regarding the Identification of Victims”

• Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers is a coalition of sex worker groups and projects working on issues of HIV and human rights for female, male and transgender sex workers across Asia and the Pacific.

 

Sources: UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data:  Surveys  by  Country 2011; U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011