Hanako Ibara “The Misery of Prostitutes” (1908)

The following essay, published as early as 1908 in Sekai Fujin (World Women), powerfully argues that Japan’s licensed prostitution system constituted sexual slavery, and officially sanctioned gang rape, and that women’s liberation would be impossible without abolishing this system of sex buying.

Sekai Fujin (World Women) was Japan’s first socialist women’s newspaper, founded and edited by Hideko Fukuda during the Meiji period (1868-1912). It featured contributions from prominent socialists of the time, including Sanshirō Ishikawa, Shūsui Kōtoku, Kinoshita, and Isoo Abe. This essay, “The Misery of Prostitutes,” by Hanako Ibara, appeared in its 23rd issue (March 1908). In an era when even socialists frequented brothels without qualms, this document, which starkly exposed the sexist essence of the licensed prostitution system and, by extension, prostitution itself, holds immense historical value. However, constrained by its time, the author viewed prostitution as something that would naturally decline if arranged marriage were abolished, failing to recognize prostitution as a system independently arising from male domination. As to the author’s identity, nothing is known, and the moniker ‘Ibara Hanako’ is very likely a pseudonym.

Recently, the call for sex equality has gained momentum, and voices demanding liberation and the restoration of women’s dignity are finally growing louder. Women have been bound like slaves, utterly deprived of freedom, and trampled upon under the current evil system that senselessly maintains stubborn and foolish old customs. To be sure, there are many bigots who defend these old ways through new guises, and vehemently attack the new ideas of equality through raising physiological excuses, and citing Japan’s family system. But, the call for sex equality is the courageous cry of women who, for 2000 years, have been oppressed and humiliated under irrational constraints for the sake of tyrannical men. They have finally awakened, discovered the true value of their individual selves, and risen up together to demand an explanation from these men for their subjugation. Stripped of the old customs, these opponents of equality have nothing but sophistry and cruelty. They conceal their base motivations: to perpetuate yesterday’s discriminatory practices today, to maintain today’s situation tomorrow, to preserve women’s enslaved condition, and to continue insulting, mocking, abusing, and perpetrating tyrannical practices against women. As women come out and risk everything to campaign for the right to vote, these men hide in the shadows and mutter, “Women should be feminine.”

I need not explain in detail here all the ways in which women are in slavery and bondage to men. This reality is illustrated in the most concrete, blatant, and real ways by the misery of prostitutes. They are despised as instruments of men’s animal-like sexual desires and are sexually tormented from morning till night, day after day, night after night. To put it bluntly, their situation is one of officially authorised serial rape. The men who visit red-light districts and gaze upon prostitutes there dressed in beautiful clothes, sitting demurely in rows in brothel windows, are nothing more than gang rape seekers. Touts frantically call to these customers as they pass by, and this is nothing more than an encouragement to gang-rape. If you take an earnest look at such a wretched scene and think about it seriously, you will feel appalled and horrified. The red-light districts are haunts and labyrinths where this criminal activity is carried out with impunity. Shamefully, Japanese society never questions this bizarre spectacle that continues since olden times.

The daily life of prostitutes was, in the past, one of horrendous abuse at the hands of ruthless pimps. They were given food and drink only once or twice a day, limited to porridge-like dishes of dried potato stems, tofu dregs, and sprouts. And when a prostitute offended a sex buying customer, she was subjected to tremendous torture by her pimp. For example, her feet would be bound tightly with thin ropes or she would be hung upside down and beaten all over with an iron rod. Or, on a freezing cold night, she would be stripped naked and tied to a tree in the brothel’s garden and left out overnight. In 1872, a decree was finally issued to liberate them. Further, in October 1900, the law came to recognise women’s right to leave prostitution at will. Although these changes have lessened the confinement and bondage of prostitutes a little, the provision allowing exit from prostitution has recently become a dead letter, and in reality women are still in slave-like bondage.

As to why we should tolerate such a bizarre institution, the proponents of retaining the licensed prostitution system say: if we abolish the brothels and do away with licensed prostitution, the number of unlicensed prostitutes will increase, underground prostitution will grow, venereal disease will spread, and adultery and the rape of virgins will proliferate. These would all contribute to a disruption of social order, and such evils produced by the abolition of prostitution would far surpass those owing to its continuation. Therefore, they say, the brothels must be retained and prostitution not eliminated. This shallow, superficial logic lying at the heart of the arguments of those who seek to retain the licensed prostitution system wholly overlooks the fact that there is the basic issue of the sexes lying at the root of prostitution. What, then, is this issue of the sexes?

Current relations between the sexes are extremely unnatural, enforced by a false moral code. Romantic love is mocked as amoral depravity, and sexuality, which is a natural human instinct, is denounced as a great sin. The narrow-minded and childish view of male-female relationships, that boys and girls should not be allowed to sit side by side in the same classroom after the age of seven, is still legitimate. Added to this is arranged marriage. By forcing women to marry, the old practice of forced monogamy is kept alive. This is like forcibly bending the limbs to seal human beings into matchboxes. Just think what happens when compatible men and women are torn apart and forced unwillingly marry others. Naturally, there will be lamentations of lost love, moans of anguish, desperate promiscuity, the sin of adultery, and the tragedy of divorce. The husband will drown in alcoholism and indulge in the pleasures of the moment, and the wife will find herself trapped in deep sorrow and loneliness, and to fill the emptiness in her heart she will engage in adultery. Thus, society as a whole becomes morally corrupt, and social orders are destroyed. It is not an exaggeration to say that all of this arises from the imposition of an unrealistic moral code on the sexes.

If today’s relationships between men and women were to be radically transformed, if they were no longer bound by the old customs, if the door to romantic love was completely opened and voluntary relationships encouraged, and if those who loved each other were to not only recognise the strengths and merits in the other’s character and temperament, but also fully understand their shortcomings, then this would be true marriage as the union of two truly loving people. Everyone would smell the scent of love at different points in their lives, which would eventually bear fruit as marriages and meaningful lives. In such a society, natural desires would not be oppressed by the segregation of young men and women for no reason, fathers and older siblings would not arbitrarily force their children and younger siblings to marry against their wills, marriages for property interests or trafficking-like marriages would disappear, and monogamy based on the full consent of the parties would naturally be observed. Would it still be necessary to retain prostitutes, licensed or unlicensed, or brothels?

The spread of venereal disease, which pro-prostitution advocates always fret about, is, after all, nothing more than a byproduct of the prostitution system—that utterly indecent and bizarre institution authorising gang rape. And, as mentioned, rape and adultery are the result of a delusional and outdated ethic that regards natural sexuality as a sin and tries to oppress and suppress it, thereby producing these very outcomes. So, if the fundamental issue between the sexes were truly resolved, the arguments of those who seek to retain licensed prostitution would end up worth not a penny.

In short, a society that requires the existence of prostitutes and brothels is a social system suffering from serious disease. Those who work for women’s liberation might find the argument for the abolition of prostitution banal, but we should adamantly hold the abolitionist position. We must wipe this ugly and disgraceful system from every corner of society. Women’s liberation has no meaning if its first task is not the complete abolition of prostitution as the model for women’s enslavement. As long as you allow this system of slavery to persist out of fear of public ridicule, attacks, or the difficulty of achieving its abolition, the age of women’s liberation will never arrive.

5 March 1908, Sekai Fujin, No. 23