Sex trade a shaky safety net for Japan’s working-poor women

[yuiyoshida]

Neon signs for sex industry venues are seen among the bars and clubs in Tokyo's Kabuki-cho red light district. Economic hardship is pushing many middle-aged women toward the nation's sex industry, despite the stigma and physical risk. | SEAN PAVONE PHOTO

by Tomohiro Osaki
Staff Writer/The Japan Times
For the past six years, 47-year-old single mother Kasumi Endo has lived a double life.

On weekdays, she works all day as a temp-staff office worker to raise her teenage daughter. But with wages hardly sufficient to keep the household afloat, Endo (not her real name) takes a surreptitious trip to Tokyo’s downtown Ikebukuro district on weekends to earn extra money.

As she climbs the stairs to exit JR Ikebukuro Station, she gradually switches her normal self off and wills herself to accept that she is now someone else: a professional working in Japan’s fuzoku sex industry.

“When I first decided to join the industry, I did so with great reluctance. I didn’t know whether it was the right thing to sell my identity as a woman. I even felt guilty for my daughter when I imagined a stranger touching the sacred part of my body where she was born,” said Endo, who agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity because she keeps her side business a secret from those around her, including her 19-year-old daughter.

Endo belongs to the seemingly burgeoning cohort of Japan’s impoverished middle-aged women gravitating toward the sex industry, despite its widespread life-threatening risks.

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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/08/17/national/social-issues/sex-trade-shaky-safety-net-japans-working-poor-women/

[Nitram]

1. I am not surprised that economics drive women to the Japanese sex trade.

But I question the idea of "life-threatening" risks. As the article notes, the Japanese sex industry takes strict precautions to prevent STDs, and AIDS is not a threat in Japan.