Both female and male prostitutes walked the streets, offering a full range of services. Reliable data are difficult to come by, but softer services seem to be gaining popularity at the expense of harder ones such as vaginal sex which is illegal but widely available or oral sex which is legal. The sex trade in Japan has long been about not only intercourse, but also the yearning for intimacy and romance, says Masahiro Yamada, a sociologist, and these are the services that are growing. Onakura shops allow men to masturbate, while female employees watch.
‘We just don’t have a proper system’
Related Stories
In Dec. This reluctance to use grownup vocabulary when talking about sex is common in the media. Sexual squeamishness is not unusual, but when doctors avoid certain words you know the problem goes deeper. It added that it was permissible to discuss prevention of STDs, but not intercourse, birth control or abortion. The Adachi City Board of Education replied that there was nothing improper about the class or its content, and that the purpose was to help students avoid pregnancies, not encourage sexual activity. Adachi is one of the poorest wards in Tokyo. As one official pointed out, such a curriculum is important since teen pregnancies perpetuate the cycle of poverty.
TOKYO (7 p.m.)
K urumin Aroma felt like her life was over at just Fast forward eight years and Aroma looks back at the episode with crushing regret. But she is determined to weaponize the ensuing trauma to help stop others from becoming, like her, one of the hundreds of young Japanese women coerced into pornography by tricksters masquerading as legitimate modeling agents. The coercion of young women into pornography and prostitution has become an epidemic in Japan, where the fetishization of adolescence is disturbingly common and legal protections for children shockingly lax. Ten years ago most of those she helped came from abroad, but today the bulk of cases that come before her charity comprise teenage runaways and abuse victims from Japan. Although officially illegal, Japan has a booming sex industry due to numerous loopholes. An estimated 5, teenagers earn cash this way. Most shockingly, child pornography, only made illegal in , remains rife. There are few laws to protect children. It offers food, coffee and counseling, as well as condoms, toothbrushes and feminine hygiene products, to girls who would rather hang out on the street than go home.
Official figures show that Japanese schoolchildren are having more sex than ever before, and that many are shunning condoms, unaware of the risks of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Increased sexual activity among the young has been accompanied by a rise in other sexually transmitted diseases. One recent survey identified a disturbing rise in incidences of chlamydia among Japanese teenagers. The number of teens diagnosed with the disease, which can cause infertility, rose to 6, in from 3, four years earlier, according to the health ministry. The actual figure may be even higher. The trend has prompted a debate about the effectiveness of sex education in Japanese schools as teenage pregnancies rise to record levels.
