Japanese porn stars need better labor rights

Porn workers of the world, unite! Do Japan’s porn actresses and actors have labor rights? This was the question asked in a recent feature in the Japan Times.

Ostensibly a report on a May 4th talk at a Koenji cafe, it was about the AV industry’s response to Human Rights Now (HRN), which had issued a damning report about the local AV industry.

The international NGO, which is based in Tokyo and has U.N. special consultative status, reported the results of an in-depth investigation into the pornography business in Japan. The report concluded that the industry had violated the human rights of women and girls through means such as blackmail, virtual enslavement and seeking illegal breach-of-contract damages from women who try to back out of films after being persuaded or duped into acting in them.

Porn industry bigwigs hosting the event this month struck back. Erotic fiction writer Kureichi Matsuzawa claimed the report has “smeared the entire industry with the rot of a few bad apples.” The hosts deftly played the woman card, accusing HRN of “painting a picture of actresses as helpless damsels in distress with no will of their own, and fostering discrimination against those in the industry who take great pride in their work.”

The HRN’s corner was fought by someone from People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence (PAPS), who cooperated in making the report.

Writer and former porn star Mariko Kawana spearheaded the event. More than a decade ago, she was famous in the world of porn for playing “beautiful older woman” roles (bijukujo-mono). She said at the event that in the roughly 400 porn films she had made, she was never coerced, duped or exploited.

“It was more like I was the one who yelled, screamed and made the director grovel on the ground whenever there was something screwy on the set,” Kawana said. She exuded power and charisma.

Goro Tameike was also present. A famous porn director as well as an external director of the major porn distributor SOD Create, Tameike also happens to be Kawana’s husband. He claimed he had experienced trouble with an actress on just a single occasion during the course of making about 1,300 porn films over a 22-year career. This power couple are industry leaders and represent the management perspective in the industry.

Two currently active porn actresses also attend as guests: Haru Imaga and Tsukio. One of them said, “I read the HRN report and was like, what industry are they even talking about? This report twists porn in a miserable way that doesn’t ring true at all.” Neither of them had a single bad word to say about the industry or their profession.

Quite the lineup, then.

But there were dissenting voices.

Porn actor Kohei Tsujimaru provided an uneasy answer to Kawan’s claim that “porn actresses come to act, not to have sex.”

“Nearly all male actors appear in porn films because they want to have sex,” he said.

He also shared a story about a porn actress who attempted suicide due to pressure from the industry to perform in certain ways.

Later in the talk, Kenji Kubodera — a former porn actor and one of the guests at the event — couldn’t stop himself from interrupting: “I used to work in the porn industry as an actor under the pseudonym Kaminari Kozo (Thunder Kid). I was subjected to horrendous torture. They thrashed me mercilessly with a horsewhip.”

This then sparked a shouting match and Kubodera was eventually escorted out. He came back a few minutes later, only to be “dragged out of the room, this time kicking and screaming”. Talk about drama.

I can only imagine what this man must have gone through on various porn sets during his career. Kubodera returned after his second eviction only to tour the room, offering apologies to each of us, scrunching his large frame into a piteous bow of contrition: “Sumimasen, sumimasen.”

Looking at Kubodera, clearly suffering mental anguish and instability, made me feel indignant toward Matsuzawa and Tameike. They hold such positions of strength that they are deaf to the reality that porn creates for countless actors and actresses whose names we will never know.

The article — which is part of a series on labour rights — notes carefully that porn actresses are made to sign outsourcing contracts that are not covered by the main labor law. This basically means they get no workers’ rights or protection. As we know, AV stars have been sued for refusing to perform, though at least in the landmark case last September the courts ruled in favor of the woman.

HRN, whose hope is not for the AV industry to be pulled down per se, also organized its own symposium on May 26th, where participants outlined the coercion rampant in Japanese pornography.

Shihoko Fujiwara of Lighthouse: Center for Human Trafficking Victims also took part in the symposium. Between 2013 and the end of April 2014 it received 120 consultations regarding appearing in AV, of whom just under 10% were male.

Needless to say, this blog is called Tokyo Kinky and we love porn as well as all the things it tells us about people. We think society is healthier with prostitution and pornography — especially when these cater to all genders, tastes and sexualities — but we also want it to be safe and fair for workers and customers.