Men arrested for brokering Japanese prostitutes in America

With the yen cheap, local wages stagnant, and the media full of stories of young Japanese people on working holiday visas in Australia earning lots of money, is it any wonder that some people thinking going abroad is a quick and easy way to make a fortune?

And that includes sex workers.

As we have previously reported, Hong Kong has cracked down on Japanese porn stars traveling to the country to work as prostitutes, where they receive higher fees and are marketed as a AV celebrities.

In the United States, border officials will stop young women if they appear to be entering the country for illegal work, including sex work.

In the latest story in this vein, the Asahi has reported that four men were arrested for arranging two Japanese woman to work in the United States as prostitutes.

Far from being a one-off, the men are alleged to have recruited up to 300 women over the past three years, sending them to work in the United States, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere, earning an estimated ¥200 million.

The ring leader is the 52-year-old Yoshio Usui, who runs a “dating” club in Tokyo. He is accused of serving as broker to a prostitution agency in America for the two women — in their twenties and thirties — last spring.

The two women went to the US in March and April 2023, where they worked as brothels for up to 30 days. During that time, they earned as much as ¥2.5 million, which is not too far off an annual salary for a worker in the service sector in Japan.

It is not clear why the men were only arrested now, but possibly a woman they brokered was caught trying to enter the US and the trail led back to the men.

The article does state that American authorities reported a website called Kaigai Dekasegi Charme (海外出稼ぎシャルム, Charming Ways to Make Money Overseas) to Japanese people. It is thought that the two women were recruited through the website, along with up to 150 others.

The website seems to be offline at present, returning a 403 forbidden error. (One of the arrested four is a 36-year-old man in Osaka Prefecture who was running the website.)

With the United States and Australia starting to crack down on single women entering their countries, other Japanese sex workers are looking to the Middle East and Southeast Asia for opportunities to earn better money.

There is nothing new about this situation: there were so many Japanese women trafficked out of the country in the 19th and 20th centuries that it spawned a nickname, Karayuki-san (Ms. Gone-to-China).

These women were typically from very poor countries (in general, most of the Japanese who emigrated to Hawai’i, South America, Manchuria, and so on came from poor regions, such as Okinawa).