Legislating Morality

Japan’s Prostitution Prevention Act in its Cultural Context

Abstract

This article situates Japan’s Prostitution Prevention Act (PPA) in its cultural and legal context and examines it along with the Entertainment Business Control Law (EBCL) to explain why commercial sex continues to thrive in legal grey areas. It shows that the PPA’s narrow definition of prostitution—penetrative intercourse for payment—combined with a laissez‑faire enforcement style has pushed the industry into “non‑intercourse” formats that are nevertheless policed, taxed and, in part, protected by organized crime through debt bondage and intimidation. The analysis traces the law’s genealogy from post‑war US occupation through Cold‑War image politics to today’s ambivalent police practice, highlighting how the statute punishes solicitation by the seller of sexual services while shielding customers and facilitating organized crime. The 2024 abolition of the PPA’s punitive chapters on rehabilitation and their replacement by the Women’s Support Act marks a rhetorical shift from punishment to empowerment, but it has already been criticized for being underfunded, hobbled by short‑term staffing, and poorly publicized. The article concludes that only a coherent, rights‑oriented framework can reconcile legal ideals, social morality and economic realities in Japan’s sex industry.