Overview of the Case
On November 16, 2020, the Metropolitan Police Department and the Osaka Prefectural Police arrested eight brokers and others on suspicion of violating the Immigration Control Act (facilitating illegal employment) and the Anti-Prostitution Act (baishun boshi-ho), among other offenses, for bringing foreign women into the country on improper residency status and putting them to work at sex-industry establishments in Tokyo and the city of Osaka.
Those arrested numbered eight in total, centered on a Japanese broker (a 51-year-old man) who orchestrated the entry procedures, along with sex-industry operators who received the foreign women.
What the Victims Endured
The alleged victims were 12 foreign women in total, all from Southeast or East Asia. Believing the promise that "there's high-paying work in Japan," they came to the country only to have their passports taken right after arrival, be forced into debt, and be made to work at sex-industry establishments.
One of the victims said: "Without my passport I couldn't even go home. I was told that if I ran, I'd never be able to repay my debt." It was a textbook case of "debt-trap" human trafficking.
The Complexity of the Legal Issues
In this kind of case, there is a complex problem: the victims themselves can be charged under the Immigration Control Act as illegal workers. Experts note that "in many cases victims fear being charged and do not report the harm, which makes it difficult to grasp the true scope of the problem."
Since the revised Immigration Control Act took effect in 2019, the acceptance of foreign workers has expanded, but there is growing concern that this could also become a breeding ground for exploitation by malicious brokers.
Countermeasures and Challenges
This bust is the result of "multi-agency cooperative investigation" coordinated among the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, immigration authorities, and police. Such inter-agency cooperation is considered indispensable for tackling cross-border human trafficking.
On the victim-support side, nonprofits and NGOs provide protective shelters and repatriation assistance, but in many cases victims refuse support out of fear of being charged, and a shift toward a "victim-centered approach" is being called for.
This article was compiled from publicly available information and interviews with sources connected to the investigation.