Hiroshi Nakasatomi, “What the Asahi Shimbun Failed to Realize: That the Sex Industry Undermines Women’s Dignity”

Below is a translation of an opinion piece submitted by Anti-Pornography and Prostitution Research Group member, Hiroshi Nakasatomi, on 5 July 2025 in response to a 20 June 2025 Asahi Shimbun’s “Tensei Jingo” column. “Tensei Jingo” is the most famous column that always appears on the front page of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. It is second only to the Editorial (called “Shasetsu”) in terms of authority and is written by one of the most distinguished editorial writers at the Asahi Shimbun.

In a lawsuit filed by sex-related industry operators who claimed that the Government’s decision not to provide COVID-19 relief funds to them was discriminatory, the Supreme Court ruled that the decision was constitutional. However, the “Tensei Jingo” column criticizes the ruling as unjust, echoing the views of the sex-related industry operators.

We distinguish between “prostitution [baishun]” and the “sexual entertainment industry [sei-fūzoku-gyō].” This is related to Japan’s legal system. In Japan, the Prostitution Prevention Law (PPL), enacted in 1956, prohibits prostitution involving sexual intercourse. But subsequently, in order to circumvent the restrictions imposed by this law, various types of sex-related businesses claiming not to involve sexual intercourse emerged. As a result, the Law on Control and Improvement of Amusement Businesses (LCAB), enacted in 1948, was revised several times to include these sexual entertainment businesses.

To the submission, Nakasatomi attached a journal article on the topic he had written in 2011 that sets out the research in detail. As of 8 July 2025, he has received no reply from the Asahi Shimbun.

Hiroshi Nakasatomi
5 July 2025

As a subscriber of the Asahi Shimbun and researcher in Japanese constitutional and gender law, I would like to share my thoughts on your “Tensei Jingo” column of 20 June 2025 (Hereinafter referred to as the TJ column). Simply, my impression was that it had been written by a customer of the sexual entertainment industry. This impression, I can confirm, is not mine alone. At the very least, it seemed to have been written from the perspective of a sex industry user, or someone speaking on his behalf.

　The TJ column criticises a recent Japanese Supreme Court ruling. As “Tensei Jingo” that appears on the front page of the Asahi Shimbun, is the face of the newspaper, the TJ column is expected to offer opinion grounded in legal knowledge; in this case, laws relevant to the ruling, namely, Law on Control and Improvement of Amusement Businesses (LCAB) and Prostitution Prevention Law (PPL), and case law relating to the sexual entertainment industry.

　However, the TJ column showed no modicum of research. Instead, it appeared to have been written out of anger at the judicial decision—whether from the position of a sex industry customer or someone speaking for one—with no grounding in facts.

　Its core argument was thus.

Different from prostitution as prohibited by Prostitution Prevention Law as an affront to human dignity, escort businesses operate as part of a legally recognised industry. So, discrimination against them in the form of rejecting COVID-19 relief payments, for abstractly conceived reasons, is unacceptable.

Here, a formal dichotomy seems to be tacitly assumed. Namely, that prostitution is prohibited under the PPL because it violates human dignity, but the sexual entertainment industry is permitted under the LCAB and so does not violate human dignity. From this implicit premise, the TJ column criticizes the Supreme Court’s ruling that the government’s decision to deny COVID-19 relief funds to sexual entertainment industry operators was appropriate on the basis of the “abstractly conceived reasons” that “the sexual entertainment industry risks harming the dignity of its workers.” It goes further to favourably quote the plaintiff’s angrily expressed view that it was actually the judgment, and not their industry, that violated human dignity.

　However, is such formalistic logic really persuasive, that the sexual entertainment industry’s legal recognition makes it categorically different from prostitution and therefore does not violate human dignity? I was horrified to see journalists—people whose job is to understand reality rather than mere legal formality—resort to this kind of formalistic logic.

　Judges, in contrast, despite their reputation for formalism, have developed substantive legal reasoning on this matter. In one ruling, the Tokyo District Court on 16 December 1966 described “hand job”, manual sex acts, as an inhuman business practice “flouting the Anti-Prostitution Law,” but still “violating the dignity of women and treating them as tools of male sexual pleasure.” In another more recent 16 July 2002 ruling, the Kobe district court similarly decided that “acts like manual or oral sex harm the dignity of women as human beings and violate prevailing ethical and moral social standards, and so are substantially indistinguishable from prostitution.”

　I believe that these rulings are entirely justified. It is absurd to suggest that a man ejaculating into a woman’s vagina as a result of sexual consent procured through the force of money violates her dignity but ejaculating on her mouth, face, abdomen, or hands does not.

　Japan’s judiciary has long maintained that legal recognition awarded to male ejaculation businesses (sexual entertainment industry) was a mistake. Nevertheless, Japan’s executive and legislative branches have failed to amend the PPL to prohibit not only paid sexual intercourse but also paid sexual acts without intercourse.

　The TJ column also misunderstands the purpose of the LCAB. Different from what it implies, this law does not treat the sexual entertainment industry as merely one of Japan’s “18,000 kinds of enterprise.” On the contrary, the law’s first article sets out its legislative purpose as ‘preserving public morals and amenity, and preventing activities that risk the sound development of youth’. In other words, the law precisely anticipates the fact that sexual entertainment businesses, different from other types of entertainment industry, harm public morals and healthy youth development. This does not comprise any “abstractly conceived” reason for withholding relief funds from the sexual entertainment industry as the TJ column claims, but recognition of its concrete and inevitable harm. This will be obvious to anyone who considers what would happen if, for example, sexual entertainment venues were allowed to open next to elementary schools or city hall, or if boys and girls were allowed inside them (both of which are prohibited under the LCAB).

　Another key point: the LCAB adopts a “licensing system” for other entertainment industry businesses, but it adopts a “notification system” for sexual entertainment businesses. In order to deliberately avoid any affirmative granting of permission for their operations, it requires them to notify police of their operations. This notification system is for the purpose of their monitoring: consistent with the spirit of the PPL, they are treated with caution.

　As such, the standard and usual interpretation of the LCAB that regulates Japan’s entertainment sector is that it does not authorise sexual entertainment businesses in the same way it does others. Accordingly, the Government’s decision to withhold COVID-19 relief funds from these businesses—and the judicial decision affirming its legality and constitutionality—must be justly understood as resting on this correct interpretation of the law, and long-standing judicial recognition of the harms of the sexual entertainment industry.

　I believe that this makes clear the subjective and dogmatic nature of the TJ column’s attack on the Supreme Court ruling. If its goal was to criticise the decision, then, at a minimum, the TJ column needed to successfully refute the understanding that the LCAB negatively treats the sexual entertainment industry. It also had to refute, based on facts, the judiciary’s assessment that the sexual acts, manual or oral, “violate the dignity of women and treat them as tools of male sexual pleasure” (as in the 1966 Tokyo ruling). But it does neither.

　I therefore urge the Asahi Shimbun and the writer of the TJ column to earnestly reflect on the fact that they published a self-righteous column criticising a Supreme Court ruling without understanding the purpose of relevant laws and considering the weight of judicial precedent.