Sawa Hiiragi, “Ordinary Men Buy Women”

This piece is an English translation of a Japanese article posted on the blog of a Japanese survivor of prostitution, Sawa Hiiragi. It is published here with the author’s permission.

Do you know what kind of people customers of the sex trade are?

Are they dangerous-looking men who belong to organised crime groups?

A man who looks like he’s not popular with women?

Flirtatious young guys?

Nerds?

Men who sexually harass women at work?

Men who molest and voyeuristically photograph women?

Men who repeatedly make misogynistic comments on the internet?

The answer is: ordinary men, including these ordinary men.

Some of my customers were university students, others were elderly men in their 90s.

There were military men, yakuza, policemen, doctors, and firefighters.

They were fathers raising daughters, and sons caring for Alzheimer fathers.

They were truck and taxi drivers.

Some men lived in large rooms in high-rise condos, others in cubicle-sized wooden rooms in cement block flats.

There was a man who lived in a cockroach-infested room with rubbish piled up and a camp stove for heat.

One man lived in a large home filled up with unused household goods because he was unable to sort through the belongings of his dead family.

There was a man who knew a lot about the history of jazz, another who couldn’t stop talking about the Avengers film series, and a man who used to aspire to be a Formula 1 car driver.

There was a man whose hobby was mountain stream fishing, and another who liked watching anime. Another man said he had no hobbies and had nothing to do on his days off.

One man liked to cook, and another said he felt like a stranger in his own home.

One man said he couldn’t have the sex he wanted with his wife, while another man said he and his wife had a good sex life.

One man worried that he had nothing in common with his son in junior high, and another said he looked forward to getting back to his family each morning after working nights.

There was an old man who said he was just about to move into a nursing home and wanted to take with him a one final flesh-on-flesh memory.

There was a 20-year-old greenhorn who wanted to cast off his virginity and improve his sexual technique before getting a girlfriend.

There were also men on welfare.

There were men who wanted me to make out receipts in the name of a restaurant.

There were teachers, tutors, and men who were researching whatnot.

There was a man who was paralysed and couldn’t get out of the bath without help.

There was a man who had come on a trip to Japan and decided to try out its sex industry while in the country.

There was a masseuse, a cook, a convenience store manager, an unemployed man, a man who bragged about his expensive-looking watch, and a man who told me not to touch his expensive suit.

There was a man who tried to intimidate me into compliance by showing me the Japanese gangster tattoo that covered his entire back.

There was a man who heated an unspecified powder in a hotel teaspoon and smoked it.

There were men who had no conversation skills, and those who were good talkers.

There was a man who extolled the virtues of the conservative government, another who muttered about his opposition to war, and another who said he volunteered to help the homeless of Tokyo.

There were men who believed poverty was a matter of personal responsibility, and others who blamed their foundering lives on being born in the wrong age.

There were men who walked in with white canes, and others who wore hearing aids.

There was a man who talked of his near-death experience in a car accident, and another who drank beer without a care in the world before driving home.

They were all like that, men who are found anywhere.

It’s ordinary men who buy women.

It is the ordinary man who buys women and acts like he can do whatever he wants to them because he bought them.

It’s ordinary men who buy women because we live in a society where it’s ok for ordinary men to buy women.

It was an ordinary man who fingered me under my skirt in the car he was afterward driving to pick up his daughter from primary school.

It was an ordinary man who forced me into off-limits rape play and afterward complained about being treated like a shitkicker at work.

It was an ordinary man who thrust an inanimate object into my dry vagina, laughing it wouldn’t be something he could do to his wife.

It was an ordinary man who made me put on a schoolgirl uniform and demanded I ask him, dear teacher, to do something naughty.

It was an ordinary man who forcefully demanded that I let him ejaculate inside me, because his old sperm would never get me pregnant.

It was an ordinary man who demanded I suck his penis, which was clearly blistered and festering from an STD.

It was an ordinary man who told me how badly he wanted to urinate on a woman’s body.

It was an ordinary man who told me he got most aroused when a prostitute sucked his unwashed, filthy penis.

It was an ordinary man who confided in me with an embarrassed smile he had once molested a sleeping woman drunk on a train platform.

It was an ordinary man who told me he knew more about women’s bodies than they did because he’d satisfied any number of prostitutes.

It was an ordinary man who told me the Japanese sex trade was clean and safe. In Thailand and Korea, the girls are beautiful but rip-off scams make it scary.

It was an ordinary man who, after ejaculating on me, lectured I would end up a no-hoper if I continued to make easy money that way.

It was an ordinary man who said he chose me because I had the same name as his daughter.

It was an ordinary man who said women like me were models of the customer service industry.

It was an ordinary man who said he would never kiss women like me because he didn’t know what diseases we had, and told me to use a condom to give him a blowjob.

It was an ordinary man who called me out to his house where his primary school-aged son was sleeping in the next room, and then forced himself on me, saying it would be ok as long as we didn’t get caught.

It was an ordinary man who cried and begged for forgiveness for secretly filming me, saying he didn’t think something like that would make me so angry.

It was an ordinary man who anxiously asked for assurance he wasn’t such a bad client.

It’s ordinary men who threaten women that, without prostitutes, all women will face the danger of rampant sex crime, and that men’s sexual desires must be met even if it’s women who must be used. So, they are loudly proclaiming men to be beastly criminals-in-waiting who are incapable of taking care of their own sexual needs.

It is ordinary men who are knifing, choking, beating, and killing the women they buy behind closed doors.

It is the act of buying women that is abnormal.

Buying a woman and using her body for ejaculation and domination is abnormal.

Buying a woman and kneading her internal organs is abnormal.

Buying a woman and forcing her into a situation where she can’t refuse any demand is abnormal.

Yet ordinary men do it.

Men are allowed to do it.

They are guaranteed the right to buy women and do what they want with them.

Not only criminals and deviants buy women, but ordinary men.

All men, ordinary and unordinary, are allowed to buy women.

They believe they are allowed to buy women and use them for ejaculation and domination.

And women continue to be supplied through the sex trade so these ordinary men can use women’s bodies for easy ejaculation and domination.

This is our society.

Ordinary men buy women in the sex trade.