【Video/Observer Network Columnist Penny】
【Executive Summary】
A few days ago, a former student sent me a Weibo message with great interest, saying, Teacher, what do you think about this matter? The content is that in the legendary Japanese two-dimensional holy land of Akihabara, because of the epidemic, many migrant workers and dispatched employees can not find jobs, especially women are more affected, which leads to an increase in the number of girls engaged in body trading in Akihabara.
Although I know that my student must have come to me with a little obscenity to tell me this news, seriously, the study of the body trade is indeed an important subject of Japanese sociology, and it has a very special significance.
Recently, there are also two online hot searches related to body trading, one is that last month, the Japanese Diet deliberated and passed the "AV Star Murder Prevention and Relief Law", the main purpose of the legislation is to prevent violence against the wishes of actresses during filming, to prevent excessive sexual exploitation, the main means is from filming to the release of the film within 1 year, the infringed actors can propose to terminate the contract, require the merchant to remove the product, ask for economic compensation, and strictly impose a sentence of less than 3 years on the relevant personnel.
This law is almost unsatisfactory on the Internet, one side believes that the law only requires all parties to do things strictly according to the contract, but the young girls who will be violated are originally weak when they sign the contract, and most of them will not win in the future, and the state should take more direct intervention. The other side believes that this bill is to deepen the society's impression of "adult films = perverted violence", which also does not allow filming, that is not allowed to shoot, is to completely destroy the AV industry, simply emphasize that actresses are exploited goods, and ignore the free will of actors, is a social discrimination against actors and consumers.
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There is also a matter where an ordinary woman said on her Twitter that she earned money to buy a 1.5 million yen Laika camera, and a man said, "You got your dad to buy it anyway" !
The woman, of course, was angry and said that she was treated as a "poor man who was sexually squeezed." This sentence caused a huge controversy on the Internet, many people criticized this girl, feeling that this concept is a discrimination against girls who engage in "daddy work", using "poor" to belittle them, ignoring the free will of girls who engage in "daddy work". Then another group of netizens came to support this girl, saying that engaging in "daddy work" is playing the law to wipe the edge, why should you be so proud.
Although these two things are different, the focus of the debate is basically the same. This controversy is rooted in the ambiguous attitude of the entire Japanese state and society to the sex trade industry (commonly known as the customs industry) coexisting with extreme indulgence and extreme contempt. On the one hand, social sex trafficking in Japan is very common, and girls with low levels of education and no job opportunities can easily enter the customs industry, and there are no real official measures to deal with it. On the other hand, national laws impose strict restrictions on sex trafficking.
For example, at the COSPLAY nightclub in Akihabara mentioned earlier, customers go in to have a drink with girls, which is legal, and then pretend that you have feelings in the process, and the rest of the things are even if they are problems between lovers, and use this way to circumvent the law. This law also gave birth to the transaction method of aid communication. In addition to national laws, society is also absolutely morally discriminatory against customs and trades, but it will not really be cared for.
Let me tell you a few of my experiences in Japan.
Before I went to Japan to study, there were domestic male friends who joked with me and said that they wanted me to buy genuine DVDs for them, of course, my answer was definitely "roll". But after I arrived in Japan, I was also very curious, and one day I went to a video store and saw a corner with a kernel for adult films, and there were several male customers. Then I was naturally ready to shake it, but as I approached the corner, my radio wave suddenly felt a chill, that is, the people inside, and there were people around me looking at me with very strange eyes.
I didn't have time to think about it, but the animal's instincts told me at the first moment that this wouldn't work, so I quickly pretended to find something on the ground and ran away. In hindsight, there could be a fair adult film counter in this store, but according to social standards, I, a female college student who looks very well-behaved, should never walk over.
Another time was in Akihabara, when I was going to see an animated movie, and when I came out, it was about seven or eight o'clock in the evening, and I found a boy in his early twenties stalking me. Here I would like to clarify that it is definitely not my nervousness, because as a criminal investigation novel lover, I still used some methods to test, and I can be sure that I must have been "tailed". But I didn't panic at the time, because it wasn't too late, there were still many people on the road, and I was still practicing karate, and I had a certain confidence in the speed of my escape.
So I thought about why he was following me, and then I thought it was very likely, because it was a little cold at night, so I put on a big cloak, basically covering my clothes, revealing a little lace edge of the skirt, in fact, the skirt itself is very ordinary, but this cover produces an illusion. I reckon that this boy mistakenly thought I was a clerk at the maid's shop, so he probably wanted to follow him to the shop. As a result, when he saw me enter the station, he was very lonely and quiet. It was really lonely, and I even felt a little sorry at the time that I couldn't help him.
Another is that because the school is not far away, I will go to Shinjuku with some classmates or roommates to drink, and then every time I will be pointed out by the seniors, this alley can not be entered, the road must be turned, and so on. If you have different needs, you have to take different paths, and walking randomly may bump into scenes that make everyone embarrassed by each other. I still think that Kabukicho in Shinjuku is a symbol of a harmonious society with Japanese vagueness.
This ambiguity can, of course, bring harmony, but it can bring about another kind of chaos. For example, in the two arguments mentioned above, one side says that against the sexual exploitation of women should eliminate the sex trade, and the other side believes that this discriminates against female sex workers and hinders personal freedom. As a result, when everyone is arguing, the person who really caused the problem disappears.
Regarding the new AV bill, no one came out to discuss how to really prevent little girls from being deceived by adulterers, and how to prevent violence in the filming of adult movies. In the controversy of "Daddy Live", the man who first provoked the trouble was also invisible. Everyone is passing on a metaphysical idea of their own, but the real problem is blurred.
This reminds me of two other famous academic themes in Japanese history about prostitutes.
One is the issue of forced consolation, which we are familiar with. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan felt that prostitutes were involved in the sale of people, which was a decadent culture in the East and must be abolished, so it issued a liberation order for prostitutes and geisha, giving these women personal freedom. However, with personal freedom, the Meiji government did not give them a new way out of life, so Japan's customs industry flourished again, coupled with capitalist economic growth, the demand of the new rich class was increasing, so the Japanese government simply legitimized the custom industry, which was convenient for management and tax collection, and even organized women to engage in overseas spring sales activities on a large scale to accumulate funds for the development of national capitalism. Intellectuals influenced by Western civilization consume young girls from the countryside while discussing women's independence and exploitation through the sex trade, without delay.
Stills from "The Dancing Girl of Izu"
In the period of foreign aggression, the militarist government developed the comfort women system, which was obviously the most extreme act of oppression of women, but the Japanese rulers and media at that time were very "cultured" and made a very powerful set of statements. The gist is that although you prostitutes are morally corrupt and the culprits of family and social instability, even inferior people like you can become a great person and practice free will by volunteering to serve the soldiers and serve the Holy War of Greater East Asia.
This logic is still used by the Japanese right today, saying that China and South Korea criticize Japan's forced conscription of comfort women and that the Japanese government persecutes women, which is an insult to the great Japanese women of wartime because they were voluntary. As soon as women's free will is spoken, the militarist government can become invisible.
After Japan's surrender, it immediately learned to apply this logic. On August 18, 1945, just after Japan's surrender, the Ministry of the Interior issued instructions to various departments and local governments to establish special comfort facilities for the US military, in the name of protecting Japan's good family women, protecting Japan's blood purity, and protecting Japan's national system. Recruit former customs practitioners, good family women who have no food at home, and little girls who are tricked into recruiting waiters, to serve the US military, and at most 70,000 people.
Later, in 1946, the US military ordered the suspension of this matter, not because the US military conscience found, but because it was too excessive, resulting in the spread of venereal diseases, for the sake of the health of the US military, the Japanese government under the pressure of the US military, began to gradually formulate laws, the goal is to abolish the official customs industry, ban the private underground customs industry. Finally, in 1956, the "Spring Sale Prevention Law" was enacted, which completely banned the sex trade. Therefore, we must pay attention to the fact that the laws of the sex trade in Japan today are very strict, not out of any oriental culture, but out of the needs of the United States.
However, on the one hand, the US military asked Japan to crack down on customs, but on the other hand, american soldiers certainly could not repair immortals. As a result, in addition to tolerating rape by the US military, the Japanese government has also carved out so-called "red line areas" in various cities, where a large number of women work part-time or full-time to sell spring, mainly serving the US military and some japanese elites. The U.S. military used to refer to local women as "Panpan" in the South Pacific, and now it is used to refer to the Japanese women who serve them. That's my second academic subject about prostitutes.
Infographic
In the past, when Marxism still occupied a relatively strong position in Japanese academia, people's research and understanding of "Pan Pan" was mainly class analysis, discussing that in the case of what japan wanted after the war, women, as the lowest level of the working class, had to endure sexual exploitation by the US military for the sake of their families' livelihood. Not only that, but japanese society at that time also vented its dissatisfaction with life and fear of the US military on these women, who were often driven away and arrested by the police, hurt by the right-wing underworld, and faced with some media and idle people's accusations. These studies mainly criticize the hegemonism of the American occupation forces and the oppression of women by the remnants of Japanese capitalism and militarism.
Later, the rise of postmodern feminist research in Europe shifted its research horizon from analyzing the social context of the time to focusing on the complex experiences of different individuals. This kind of research argues that the past emphasis on the tragic situation of women as an oppressed class negated women's initiative in the face of difficulties in survival, and was also a kind of discrimination against "Pan Pan".
Such studies emphasize the role of "Pan Pan" in Japanese society, such as analyzing Pan Pan's clothing culture to reflect the cultural fusion of the East and the West, while influencing the later popular culture of Japan, turning sex into a means of resisting the secular order. For example, pan pan changed the impression of the US military on Japan and had a positive impact on US-Japan relations, and some believe that "Pan Pan" changed the Japanese view of "mixed-race children", played a positive role in resisting militarist ultra-nationalism, and promoted the legalization of abortion in Japan. In short, it is to express that these women, whom we think are very poor, have actually made a great contribution to social progress.
These analyses are indeed very serious and very good. However, the fly in the ointment is that the responsibility of the Japanese government and the US military is hidden again.
Having said so much, in fact, in the final analysis, from the surrender of Japan in the last century to the present, including the issue of the sex trade, there are too many problems that the Japanese government hopes to use an ambiguous attitude to blur the problem, but in the Internet age, everyone's tolerance for ambiguity is getting lower and lower. Therefore, whether it is the COSPLAY store where Akihabara is playing the edge ball, or the AV Bill, or something else, it will definitely be controversial on the Internet. But whether Japanese netizens can find the fundamental way to solve the problem in the quarrel is not something that my Chinese can know.
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