Outlawing prostitution does more harm than good.
Do you seriously want to be with someone who is only avoiding prostitution because the law told them so?
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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The Justice Ministry is moving toward revising Japan's anti-prostitution law to punish the sex buyers, addressing a legal imbalance that has only targeted the sellers for 70 years, according to government sources.
I hope it's obvious why only punishing the sellers puts them in a very very vulnerable position, so evening the playing field in that regard is probably good. That said, prostitution should be decriminalized, or better yet legally protected.
"I want to sell sex." "I want to buy sex." "Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?" The state shouldn't be preventing people from having sex in exchange for money; it should be protecting them to minimize exploitation and generally bad outcomes.
This could be interesting for another reason. Alienation of affection laws (i.e. breaking up a marriage) are a thing here. In the past, some have gotten out of the fines/penalties because this was clearly a transaction and not love. Not being able to legally pay anymore makes that interesting.
OK so getting paid for sex was already criminalised and now paying for sex is also criminalised.
What will this change for sex workers who are already in the business?
Only PiV is illegal in Japan. All other sex work is explicitly legal.
Probably just make their fairly crap job worse. The new, more conservative government is pushing this as a pro-women "equal rights for both buyer and seller" policy, when really it just takes rights away from customers and furthers the goals of their puritan mindset.
The larger problems sex workers face (than equal penalties) is that they don't do a 'real job' according to the govt, so cannot get social security coverage, no unions, and very limited legal protections for their high risk job. A situation ripe for exploitation by a criminal class.
If the government really wanted to protect them with equal rights they would follow the example of many/most western countries and legalize prostitution completely, granting tax status, social services and welfare, regulation of the industry, and legitimizing the work (thereby reducing the social stigma eventially).
NB: I was just reading that only intercourse is illegal, and even that was pretty lax law because the fine is only ~$130 US - less than prostitutes would generally earn from an individual client. So; oral sex, anal sex, etc: fully legal - this allows brothels and prostitutes to operate quite openly, advertise etc with few legal issues.
Probably not much. This, in my opinion, serves two purposes:
- Shaming the men (Japan is huge on appearances)
- Money grab; they get to fine the men now and not just the women
Gotta get those birth rates up, don't want any sexual energy going into anything but making a baby. If they could get away with banning porn they probably would, especially with this new far right government.
Amazing that this news org is able to hold onto asahi.com in the modern era
Looks like the paper is one of Japan's biggest, on the level of NYT in the US so it makes sense. If they have very large circulation the domain is probably worth more for them to distribute content then it is to a beer company where the website matters far less. Like unless there's some promotion going on why would you go to a beer companies website?
What do you mean? Asahi shinbun is a big news company in Japan and they probably grabbed the domain way before the beer company would have even needed a website.
even more amazing that the news vorp belongs to the beermaker of the same name
Efit: This actually doesnt appear to be true :(
It's not the newspaper, but interestingly enough drink companies don't bother hiding their connection to alcohol the same way they would in eg the US. Asahi also produces all sorts of soft drinks like teas and sodas and the Asahi branding is prominent. Maybe this is common in some places but for the US it'd feel like having ads for "delicious Budweiser cola".
Is that true? That makes more sense then, actually! I thought they somehow resisted what I'm sure would be persistent high-priced offers to buy the domain from one of the largest beverage holding groups in Asia.
TBF, “Asahi” is a better name for a newspaper than for a brewery 😅 (It means “morning sun” in Japanese)
TIL Asahi was named by an epic alcoholic I guess.
Haha! Though they were probably more of a patriot than a drunk: Japan is the land of the rising sun, after all!
And by that I mean that the name of the country (in Japanese) literally means “origin of the sun”, and that the emperor is traditionally considered a direct descendant of the sun goddess.
This is what i was told once upon a time. But upon actual research it sadly appears not. At least the newspaper is not on the list of properties of the asahi holdings that owns the beer company. (for some reason i am not able to paste the link onypjone)
Soaplands and host clubs were already fairly grey wink wink nod nod affairs so not sure that changes much.
I seem to remember sex as being strictly defined as p-in-v penetrative action very narrowly thus allowing other acts to not count for those purposes. Soaplands aren't technically that and host clubs don't do any action on the clock or directly for cash.
Edit: clarity.
In our fascist government‽ You wish.
I don't think a party that has like 1% of the seats in the diet can really be used as evidence of the entire JP government being fascist.
et tu ineruditus‽ Praxis ≠ Concensi.
Everything the government has been doing is fascism, it's just leaning extra on poppulus praxis.
All that's missing now is deathcamps.
Seems like you're wheeling those goalposts around now friend.
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