Free Human Trafficking Around the World by Stephanie Hepburn Page A

with the entertainer visa (MOFA, 2008a). And indeed the number of these visas decreased from 134,879 in 2004, to 99,342 in 2005, to 40,000 in 2006 (Hongo, 2006; SMC, 2009). But the visa is still utilized by traffickers. In 2009 it was discovered that a former government official had accepted a $54,000 bribe to facilitate entertainer visas for 280 women from the Philippines. The visas were granted by MOFA. The women were to perform in charity concerts but upon arrival in Japan worked as bar hostesses. No investigation occurred to determine whether trafficking took place in relation to this case. The government cited lack of evidence (U.S. Department of State, 2009). The entertainer visa is certainly not the only visa to have been used in the trafficking of persons. People are also trafficked into Japan under the spouse or child of Japanese national visa category (OAS, 2005). Visas are not always necessary. Many countries such as Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Korea, and Taiwan have visa exemption arrangements with Japan that allow nationals to stay in Japan for a limited period ranging from 14 days or less to 6 months or less (MOFA, 2012). The largest officially identified group of trafficking victims is female foreign nationals who willingly migrate to Japan but face debt bondage upon arrival. With debts of up to $50,000, the women are forced into labor or commercial sexual exploitation in order to pay back their debts (U.S. Department of State, 2009).
    Many experts state that the
yakuza
(organized crime) networks play a significant role in the smuggling and subsequent debt bondage of women—particularly women from China, Thailand, and Colombia—for forced prostitution in Japan (PBS, 2009). Determining the exact extent of yakuza involvement is difficult because of the covert nature of the sex industry. Consequently, the yakuza are able to minimize people’s direct knowledge of their involvement. Michiko Yokoyama stated that she had heard many stories involving the yakuza but that it is difficult to know which stories are accurate. “Polaris Project Japan is working with particular focus on victim assistance,” Yokoyama said. “We hear many random stories including yakuza, but since our focus is not on researching yakuza networks but on direct assistance to the potential victims of human trafficking, we do not ask further questions. So we do not have much information and are also sensitive about releasing any information that might be without any ground.” 4
    Jake Adelstein, a former journalist for the
Yomiuri Shimbun
and author of
Tokyo Vice
, was exposed firsthand to the yakuza networks. In an interview for Reuters, Adelstein, who is a Polaris Project Japan board member, revealed that a friend—who was a prostitute—disappeared when she attempted to help him discover more about what he suspected to be a yakuza human trafficking ring:
    There are times when the street justice the yakuza deal out seems like poetic justice, and there are a few yakuza whom I consider honorable men, in their own way. At the same time, certain factions of the yakuza engage in human trafficking, the production of child pornography, extortion, stock manipulation, pushing drugs, assault, loan sharking and occasionally murder. They can and often do create a lot of human misery, and these days I think they’re out of control. (Reynolds, 2009)
    The yakuza networks are extremely well organized and stay informed about all crime-related legislation.
The Guardian
reports that members of the Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza—numbering roughly 40,000—are required to study any new anticrime laws in order to identify legal loopholes and avert crackdowns on their activities (McCurry, 2009; Adelstein, 2009). One briefing distributed within a yakuza group reads: “It is now illegal to give financial rewards or promote someone who was involved in a hit against a member of a rival gang. But it is not illegal to give them a salary with a front company and