Vietnamese man arrested for sexual assault of prostitute in Shizuoka

Police have arrested a Vietnamese man living in Hamamatsu for the alleged rape of a sex worker.

According to a report by TV Shizuoka, the unnamed man has admitted having sex with the woman but claims there was consent.

The 28-year-old works in the food and drink industry, and lives in Chuo Ward, Hamamatsu. The allegation relates to an incident at a love hotel in the same ward in late February.

It is unclear why it has taken this long for police to arrest him.

The sex worker is a woman — presumably Japanese, though not specified in the report — in her twenties who works for a “dispatch-type” brothel, meaning the service sends an escort to your hotel of choice.

The woman was uninjured. She made a complaint to police, which eventually led to the man’s arrest, though it is not immediately clear how he was identified (since he’s hardly likely to have given her his name and address).

Full penetration is nominally not allowed with sex workers in Japan, because this enables businesses to operate within a gray area in the law that otherwise prohibits profiting from the sale of sexual services (though “freelance” streetwalkers are not subject to such scrutiny). A brothel or dispatch-type service will almost always have official rules saying that penetration (known as “honban” in Japanese) is not allowed, but in reality this is typically at the discretion of the individual sex worker and client.

Perhaps in this case, the customer was expecting full sex but she was not willing to offer it.

There are something like 600,000 Vietnamese in Japan, making them the largest migrant workforce in the country. Many of them are part of the government’s controversial Technical Intern Training Program, which supplies cheap labor to manufacturers and other small companies, often in rural areas. The program is rife with the abuse and mistreatment of trainees, and some participating in the program overstay or abscond to pursue other employment opportunities illegally.

It stands to reason that the increase in migrant numbers is, sadly yet inevitably, going to lead to an uptick in incidents like this, though it also highlights the need for clear and respectful communication between sex workers and clients — something that might be hindered by language barriers and cultural differences.