City in Focus: Tokyo
Prayer Briefing
Tokyo, Japan, boasting over 35 million inhabitants, is one of the most prominent commerce and trade epicenters of the earth. With a history dating back centuries, Tokyo draws businessmen and tourists alike from all over the globe leading to a famous sex tourism industry. The most disturbing trends are in media: cartoons featuring graphic depictions of sexual acts, and rape-based video games where the object is to sexually assault women and girls. Tokyo is on the vanguard of the slow encroachment of technology into the sexual sphere, and what is emerging is a normalized culture of rape and pedophilia.
Tokyo has had a long standing battle with the most effective way to legislate prostitution. In the seventeenth century, the first red light district was established in Tokyo (then called Edo) in an effort to corral what was viewed a distasteful but necessary industry. Yujo’s, the “pleasure women” populated brothels in Yoshiwara, the famous prostitution district, are technically the predecessors of the Geisha (though a modern Geisha should not be understood as a prostitute). By segmenting the sex trade and confining it to the highly regulated Yoshiwara, Japan succeeded at maintaining the strict barrier between the private lives of its citizens and the more polite public expression, a line of cultural propriety and taboo that endorses the guilt-free pursuit of sexual fetish though with a limit on what may be discussed in public.
In 1956, prostitution was decisively outlawed in a major piece of legislation. But it was the specific act of coitus that was specifically criminalized, leaving the door open to a broad sex based industry to thrive in the loopholes. Regulations and modifications have been made in the decades since, but today, high-end sex shops have structured their prostitution services as outside consultants who merely pay rent. What happens in the rooms from the point of view of the shop owners—as well as the police and the tax agencies— is a consensual act between adults, not prostitution.
Japanese organized crime, the Yakuza, are eager to capitalize on the prominent sex trade of Tokyo’s culture. The Yakuza own a full 120 establishments in the midst of Tokyo’s most famous red light district, Kabukicho. Over 150,000 non-Japanese women are in prostitution in Japan which could indicate a massive trafficking enterprise. Whether importing trafficking victims from South East Asian countries, or luring in Japanese girls with “lover-boy” tactics, the Yakuza have no problems finding venues for their victims.
Prayer Points:
Pray for revival in Kabukicho, world famous red light district in Tokyo, haven for the Yakuza.
Ask for God to disrupt the power base of the Yakuza.
Pray that righteous police forces would make headway in their attempts to close illegal brothels and release victims.
