Japan Tries in Vain to Stamp Out Teen Prostitution

By Kazunori Takada

TOKYO (Reuters) - Saki's date for the evening is a middle-aged businessman. He takes her out for dinner, buys her a few beers. Then they walk to a nearby hotel and have sex.

Saki, 14, is a Japanese schoolgirl. She meets men through the country's many telephone dating clubs, and sleeps with them in exchange for a bit of extra pocket money.

Two years after Japan passed legislation to outlaw teenage prostitution -- known in Japanese as ``enjo kosai,'' or ''compensated dating'' -- the practice continues, though less openly than before.

Newspapers have been full of reports of prominent public figures arrested for buying sex from schoolgirls young enough to be their daughters.

Last month, a 43-year-old Tokyo high court judge, Yasuhiro Muraki, received a suspended jail term for paying several schoolgirls for sex.

A parliamentary court hearing is now in session to decide whether he should be impeached.

Just weeks earlier, a junior high school teacher was arrested for paying a 14-year-old girl $200 to go to bed with him.

``The situation has improved a lot since the law was passed,'' said Junko Miyamoto, a representative of a group lobbying to stop child prostitution.

``Many of these men didn't know they were doing something wrong until the law told them so.''

Japan's current anti-prostitution laws only punish those caught selling sex, not their customers.

But the legislation passed in 1999 made it a criminal offence to pay for sex with anyone under 18. It also outlawed for the first time the sale and distribution of child pornography.

During the first six months of this year, police arrested 394 people for paying for sex with teenagers. That compares with 613 in 2000.

Yet many say that teenage prostitution has merely retreated into the shadows.

``I don't know if the situation has become better. It has become less visible,'' said Yukihiro Murase, a lecturer in sexology at Hitotsubashi University.

CALL GIRLS

Many commentators point to Japan's telephone dating clubs as hotbeds of teenage prostitution.

In the clubs, men pay to sit in booths and wait for women -- or sometimes schoolgirls -- to call in. ``Conversations'' sometimes lead to dates, and dates sometimes lead to ''compensation.''

That is how Saki, who describes her exploits to the author of a recent book, ``Girls Involved in Compensated Dating,'' met her middle-aged patrons.

``I talked (with men) at telephone clubs and made promises to meet them if they sounded rich,'' she told Arika Shimamura, a junior high school teacher who helped write the book.

``Some of them would give me 5,000 yen ($42) for just eating with them.''

She added that she started having dinner-and-sex dates after one of the men forced her to have sex.

National Police Agency figures show that 37 percent of known teen prostitution cases as of this June involved the clubs.

In a move to crack down, Japan's parliament in June passed laws tightening regulations on telephone clubs, requiring operators to verify that all customers are over the age of 18.

``Historically speaking, Japanese men have never had the mentality that buying women was a bad thing,'' Hitotsubashi University's Murase said.

``However, men were always mainly interested in professional prostitutes.''

But now telephone dating clubs enable them to meet schoolgirls easily and anonymously, helping the enjo kosai trade to flourish, he said.

MONEY AND VALUES

Some experts say a lack of sexual taboos, coupled with modern Japan's notorious materialism, explains why girls such as Saki are willing to sell their bodies for a designer bag.

Japan has always been more tolerant than many countries of the pleasures of the flesh, and at no time has pre-marital sex come in for cultural or religious condemnation, Murase said.

``That's why girls engage in prostitution as long as it's not known to their families or the people around them. The Internet and the telephone make that possible.'' Others say the moral climate makes Japan a haven for pedophiles -- or at least those for whom the image of the schoolgirl, much eroticized in the tabloid media, has become something of a fetish.

Miyamoto of the lobby group said the availability of pornographic pictures found in weekly tabloid magazines sold in convenience stores and on street corners was constantly generating sexual demand for teenage girls.

``When people see sexual images of young girls, they look for a place to act on their desires,'' Miyamoto said.

``If they can't get girls under 18 years old, they find 19- or 20-year-olds and dress them up and make them look like schoolgirls.''

Teen prostitution may also reflect a growing sense of identity crisis among men in a society that was once staunchly male-dominated, Murase said.

``Traditionally, women used to follow men as long as they had money to support them,'' he said.

``But now men have to do a little more than that, and they aren't used to it. That's why they turn to younger girls who they find easier to control.''