2024 Trafficking in Persons Report: Japan

JAPAN (Tier 2)

The Government of Japan does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. The government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period, therefore Japan remained on Tier 2. These efforts included investigating more trafficking cases, initiating more prosecutions of alleged traffickers, and identifying more trafficking victims, including male victims. The government also released a report with recommendations from an official expert panel on reforming the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) to reduce vulnerabilities to forced labor and submitted a bill reflecting the panel recommendations to the Diet in March 2024. The bill remained with the Diet for approval at the end of the reporting period. However, the government did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas. The number of criminal investigations and cases prosecuted by the government for labor trafficking and child sex trafficking remained low during the reporting period. Law enforcement continued to identify hundreds of children exploited in the commercial sex industry without sufficient screening for trafficking indicators, which allowed a majority of child sex traffickers to operate with impunity. Authorities continued to prosecute and convict traffickers principally under laws prescribing insufficiently stringent penalties, and for at least the seventh consecutive year, courts issued either fully suspended sentences of imprisonment or fines to most convicted traffickers. Reports of labor trafficking indicators among migrant workers in the TITP persisted, but the government did not proactively identify any labor trafficking victims within the TITP or prosecute any traffickers who exploited TITP workers. Within the TITP, the government’s memoranda of cooperation (MOCs) with sending countries remained ineffective in preventing foreign-based labor recruitment agencies from charging excessive fees – a key driver of debt-based coercion among TITP participants. Authorities continued to rely on disparate, ineffective identification and referral procedures, which may have resulted in Officials inappropriately penalizing victims solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked. Not all prefectures offered adequate services for trafficking victims, and while the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) provided male victims with temporary accommodations as an emergency refuge, no government shelters could accommodate male victims, and women and child trafficking victims often had to quit work or school to receive shelter services. The government referred less than a third of identified victims to services.

Vigorously investigate and prosecute sex and labor trafficking and seek adequate penalties for convicted traffickers, which should involve significant prison terms. * Develop and implement government-wide SOPs, instead of agency-specific SOPs, for the identification and referral to care of labor trafficking victims, including those in Japan under the auspices of the TITP, on other visa statuses, and in immigration detention. * Enhance screening to ensure victims – including children exploited in commercial sex without third-party facilitation and migrant workers under the TITP and the Specified Skilled Worker Visa (SSW) – are identified and referred to services and not inappropriately detained or deported solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct resulted of being trafficked. * Increase resources for the care of trafficking victims, including survivor-centered shelters with freedom of movement and services for foreign and male victims. * Enact an anti-trafficking law that clearly defines trafficking in persons in line with the definition of trafficking under the UN TIP Protocol, including child sex trafficking, which does not require a demonstration of force, fraud, or coercion. * Increase implementation of the TITP reform law’s oversight and enforcement measures, including by training Organization for Technical Intern Training (OTIT) personnel and immigration officials on victim identification, improving OTIT coordination with NGOs, scrutinizing work plans and contracts prior to approval, thoroughly inspecting work sites, terminating contracts with agencies or employers charging excessive worker-paid commissions or fees, and referring labor violations that are indicative of labor trafficking to law enforcement. * Establish formal channels that allow all TITP participants to change employment and industries if desired. * Amend anti‑trafficking laws to remove sentencing provisions that allow fines in lieu of imprisonment and increase the penalties for trafficking crimes to include a maximum of no less than four years’ imprisonment. * Enact legislation banning employers from retaining passports or other personal documents of any foreign worker, not just SSW or TITP participants. * Reduce migrant workers’ vulnerability to debt-based coercion by eliminating all worker-paid recruitment and service fees with MOC partner governments. * Increase enforcement of bans on “punishment” agreements, passport withholding, and other practices by organizations and employers that contribute to labor trafficking. * Investigate, prosecute, convict, and punish Japanese citizens who engage in child sex tourism overseas.

The government maintained insufficient law enforcement efforts. Japan did not have a comprehensive anti-trafficking statute that included definitions in line with international law. It criminalized sex trafficking and labor trafficking crimes through disparate penal code laws pertaining to “prostitution” of adults and children, child welfare, immigration, and employment standards. Article 7 of the “Prostitution Prevention Law” criminalized inducing others into “prostitution” and prescribed penalties of up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to ¥100,000 ($707) if fraudulent or coercive means were used, and up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to ¥100,000 ($707) if force or threats were used. Article 8 of the same law increased penalties to up to five years in prison and a fine of up to ¥200,000 ($1,414) if the defendant received, entered into a contract to receive, or demanded compensation for crimes committed under Article 7. The “Act on Regulation and Punishment of Activities Relating to Child Prostitution and Pornography and the Protection of Children” criminalized engaging in, acting as an intermediary for, and soliciting the commercial sexual exploitation of a child and prescribed penalties of up to five years’ imprisonment, a fine, or both. The act also criminalized the purchase or sale of children for the purpose of exploiting them through commercial sex or the production of child pornography, and it prescribed a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. The government also prosecuted trafficking-related crimes using the Child Welfare Act, which broadly criminalized transporting or harboring children for the purpose of causing them to commit an obscene or harmful act and prescribed penalties of up to 10 years in prison, or a fine of up to ¥3 million ($21,206), or both. The Employment Security Act (ESA) and the Labor Standards Act (LSA) criminalized forced labor and prescribed penalties of up to 10 years’ imprisonment or a fine not exceeding ¥3 million ($21,206). However, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) reported the definition of “forced labor” under the LSA was narrower than the definition of human trafficking under international law and – in practice – rare cases charged as “forced labor” under the LSA were not treated as human trafficking crimes. When penalties allowed for fines in lieu of imprisonment for sex trafficking, they were not commensurate with penalties prescribed for other grave crimes, such as rape. Civil society organizations reported reliance on these overlapping statutes continued to hinder the government’s ability to identify and prosecute trafficking crimes, especially for cases involving labor trafficking with elements of psychological coercion. Prosecutors previously reported that many prosecutors avoided using the ESA and LSA due to a perception that the relatively high penalties were more likely to trigger appellate processes that would decrease their overall conviction rates and negatively affect their professional standing. The government legally prohibited employers and supervising organizations from confiscating passports or residence cards of SSW and TITP participants, but did not have any laws that prohibited employers, recruiters, or labor agents from confiscating the passports, travel, or other identity documents of Japanese workers or other categories of foreign workers; instead, the government had guidelines prohibiting document retention for these workers. As in the previous reporting period, the government did not report efforts to enforce the law prohibiting the confiscation of TITP participants’ documents. Contacts previously reported an acute lack of awareness of trafficking among key law enforcement and judicial stakeholders.

In 2023, the National Police Agency (NPA) and the MHLW investigated 56 suspected traffickers in 115 cases, compared with 22 suspects investigated in 60 cases in 2022. In 2023, the government initiated prosecutions of 42 alleged traffickers (39 for sex trafficking and three for labor trafficking) compared with 32 alleged traffickers prosecuted in 2022 (all for sex trafficking). Prosecutions of 14 defendants were ongoing at the close of the reporting period. The government convicted 33 traffickers (31 for sex trafficking and two for labor trafficking) – the same number convicted in 2022. Of the 33 convicted traffickers, 24 received sentences of imprisonment ranging from one to 12 years, 15 of which were fully suspended; courts sentenced nine traffickers to only a fine. For at least the seventh consecutive year, courts issued either fully suspended sentences of imprisonment or fines to most convicted traffickers (72 percent, compared to 67 percent in 2022). The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking crimes.

None of the prosecutions and convictions involved labor trafficking within the TITP. Despite the known prevalence of labor trafficking indicators within the TITP program, the government has never reported holding traffickers who exploit TITP participants criminally accountable or sentenced them with adequate penalties that include terms of imprisonment. The government published an inspection manual and an annual inspection policy for on-site inspections and reported OTIT screened for indicators of inappropriate treatment such as non-payment of wages and human rights violations such as assault during their inspections. NGO service providers reported repeated attempts to draw attention to specific allegations of labor trafficking occurring at TITP worksites, and despite the government conducting thousands of inspections of these worksites throughout the year, NGOs maintain authorities generally did not proactively investigate these allegations for potential trafficking crimes. NGOs reported courts set prohibitively high evidentiary standards for labor trafficking cases involving foreign victims, including an overreliance on physical indicators of abuse in lieu of evidence supporting psychological coercion, stymying appropriate law enforcement action.

The government reported the involvement of a third-party facilitator was not required for a formal prosecution or conviction of perpetrators for sex trafficking crimes. However, the government generally did not investigate or prosecute cases involving child commercial sexual exploitation under trafficking statues because, in practice, authorities did not formally identify children in commercial sexual exploitation as sex trafficking victims unless a third party facilitated the commercial sex acts. In 2023, the government reported 577 cases of “child prostitution” involving at least 503 suspects and 390 victims. As in previous years, the government did not identify the vast majority of the children involved in these cases as trafficking victims. In previous years, authorities similarly processed hundreds of “child prostitution” cases without formally investigating them as trafficking crimes (between 630 and 956 cases per year from 2018 to 2022). In 2023, the government arrested 9 suspects in 4 cases related to Joshi kosei (JK) businesses – establishments that can facilitate and be used as dating services connecting adult men with underage high school girls. Eight major prefectures maintained ordinances banning JK businesses, prohibiting girls younger than 18 from working in compensated dating services, or requiring JK business owners to register their employee rosters with local public safety commissions. The government continued to provide anti-trafficking trainings to various ministries, including OTIT, NPA, MOJ, and MHLW on trafficking laws and regulations.

The government maintained insufficient protection efforts. The government identified 61 trafficking victims – including 48 sex trafficking victims and 13 labor trafficking victims – an increase from 29 female trafficking victims – 27 sex trafficking victims and two labor trafficking victims – identified the previous year. The government identified 13 women, 28 girls, and seven boys as sex trafficking victims, as well as nine women, one girl, two men, and one boy as labor trafficking victims; the 11 adult labor trafficking victims were foreign nationals. Separately, an NGO identified seven women foreign national sex trafficking victims.

Observers reported it was difficult to assess the government’s referral process based on poor communication and said the government could have done more to proactively identify and protect victims; NGOs previously reported the lack of adequate standardized guidelines, poor coordination among ministries, and an incomplete, disparate set of sex and labor trafficking statutes among relevant agencies contributed to the government’s inadequate efforts to identify and protect victims. The government maintained both formal guidelines for officials on identifying victims, and a handbook for law enforcement officials that included procedures for handling trafficking cases; however, the guidelines for officials to identify victims – initially drafted in 2010 and never updated – were neither comprehensive nor sufficient, limiting access to care for many victims. Although officials reportedly screened for trafficking among TITP foreign workers and all individuals involved in commercial sex investigations, the government did not identify any trafficking victims among TITP participants as a result of proactive screening efforts and continued only to identify a fraction of “children in prostitution” as sex trafficking victims. Observers noted that the number of foreign victims formally identified by the government decreased in recent years, and most cases of foreign victims in 2023 were individuals who had escaped exploitation on their own and sought assistance compared victim identification resulting from proactive law enforcement activities that were more prevalent before the COVID-19 pandemic. Interagency stakeholders followed disparate, insufficient victim identification procedures, which did not incorporate all forms of trafficking, especially child sex trafficking and labor trafficking of migrant workers. Police and immigration officials reportedly lacked awareness of trafficking indicators, especially in cases involving foreign nationals and even in cases with numerous and persistent indicators. Due to the limited scope of laws prohibiting commercial sex, widespread exploitation of children and adults took place within a legalized but largely unregulated range of “delivery health services” and urban entertainment centers which facilitated commercial sex acts. Because of authorities’ misunderstanding of sex and labor trafficking and insufficient victim screening and identification procedures, the government likely continued to arrest, detain, or deport victims solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked, including immigration violations.

The government recognized two TITP foreign workers as victims of labor trafficking after they escaped and self-reported their exploitation to officials; OTIT and the Labor Standards Inspection Office provided assistance to ensure all unpaid wages were paid to the two victims. Officials also informed both victims of available victim support services, but both victims refused services and elected for repatriation home; a supervising organization covered temporary accommodation and travel fees associated with their repatriation. In 2022, 9,006 TITP participants disappeared from their jobs, some of whom fled exploitative or abusive conditions. The government did not provide updated statistics for 2023. TITP participants who escaped abusive employers or conditions but did not seek assistance from lawyers or labor unions were typically apprehended by law enforcement and placed in immigration detention, and authorities often subjected them to revocation of residency status and subsequent deportation; the government required missing participants to self-report, and if officials determined they had legitimate grounds for not performing their original employment, participants residency status would not be revoked. Some labor contracts featured illegal automatic repatriation clauses for interns who became pregnant or contracted illnesses while working in Japan. Immigration authorities conducted 13,723 screening interviews of TITP participants departing Japan prior to the end of their contracts, compared with 13,111 screenings in the previous year. The MOJ did not report whether immigration officials identified any trafficking victims during these interviews; 10 TITP participants reported their departure was forced.

Authorities did not consistently identify children as victims of sex trafficking unless a third party facilitated the commercial sex acts, preventing hundreds of children from essential victim protection services and judicial recourse. Hundreds of minors exploited in the commercial sex industry came into contact with police during the reporting period, but the government did not report if those children were being screened or identified as child sex trafficking victims. The government also reported it did not treat all cases of children in commercial sex as child sex trafficking cases because – contrary to definitional standards under the 2000 UN TIP Protocol – it required the perpetrator to exercise “control over the victim.” Some provincial law enforcement officials noted in previous reporting periods that Japan’s unusually low age of consent, 13, further complicated efforts to formally identify children exploited in commercial sex as trafficking victims. In June 2023, the government enacted revisions to Article 177 of the penal code that raised the age of consent to 16.

As in previous years, the government failed to provide overall adequate protection services, such as survivor-centered shelters, psycho-social care, and legal aid, to victims of all forms of trafficking. Authorities referred 19 of the 61 identified trafficking victims to care, including 12 sex trafficking victims (three women, nine girls), and seven women forced labor victims; the government did not refer any male victims to care. This was compared with nine referrals of sex trafficking victims to Women’s Consultation Offices (WCO) shelters or child guidance centers for services in the previous year. The availability and quality of government-run services for victims varied widely according to prefecture, and observers reported referral procedures were not transparent or understood by all agencies and organizations involved in victim support. The government contributed funding and training for WCOs and child guidance centers, which could provide shelter for female and child trafficking victims alongside victims of other crimes, and “one-stop assistance centers,” which could assist victims of sexual abuse, including some forms of sex trafficking. Each prefecture had at least one WCO, child guidance center, and one-stop support center. WCO shelters provided food and other basic needs, psychological care, and coverage of medical expenses; and shelter residents could leave the facilities freely. Some NGOs continued to allege the physical conditions and services in these facilities were poor and overly restrictive. WCOs in less resourced prefectures required women and children seeking shelter to quit their jobs or schooling, reportedly for the shelters’ secrecy. Additionally, government service providers reportedly could not assist victims until the government formally identified the victim, which delayed access to services. WCOs could not accommodate all LGBTQI+ individuals; no government shelter could accommodate male trafficking victims. Victims could file civil suits to seek compensation from traffickers, but – as in previous years – the government did not report whether any did so. Some employers pressured TITP participants to leave their labor unions to reduce their chances of seeking recompense for labor abuses committed against them.

The government reported foreign trafficking victims were legally entitled to the same benefits as Japanese victims, however in practice foreign victims had limited or no access to other government-provided social services from which legal resident victims could benefit. Observers reported the government did not proactively inform foreign victims of available services unless asked; officials often prioritized repatriating potential foreign victims without completing identification procedures, in part because victims preferred to return home as quickly as possible as they were unaware of assistance available in Japan. The government relied on and expected foreign embassies to provide protection services to their nationals whom traffickers exploited in Japan. The government did not provide residency permits to any identified trafficking victims, as no identified victims were found to be in violation of the Immigration Control and Refugee Act, a decrease from two in 2022. Temporary, long-term, and permanent residence benefits were reportedly available to foreign victims who feared the repercussions of returning to their countries of origin, but the government did not report whether any victims received these benefits. The government continued to fund an international organization that provided return and reintegration assistance to foreign trafficking victims identified in Japan.

The government modestly increased efforts to prevent trafficking. Overall efforts, particularly to prevent trafficking among the highly vulnerable migrant worker population, remained inadequate. The government maintained a national-level interagency coordinating body for anti-trafficking efforts and a lower-level law enforcement coordination group that each met once during the reporting period. The government continued to produce an annual public report on government actions to combat trafficking and tracked measures against the stated goals of its 2022 anti-trafficking NAP. The NAP prioritized strengthening penalties for convicted traffickers, improving identification of child sex trafficking, and preventing labor abuses, including labor trafficking, within the TITP. The NPA allocated ¥29.42 million ($207,959) for anti-trafficking activities, including for anonymous reporting services, training, public awareness campaigns and events, and prefectural police investigative activities. Authorities continued to raise awareness of trafficking by disseminating information online – including on the NPA’s public website – and through radio programs, posters, and brochures, as well as through leaflets distributed to NGOs, immigration and labor offices, and diplomatic missions in Japan and abroad. The Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office and MOJ respectively spent ¥1.93 million ($13,642) and ¥6.29 million ($44,462) on awareness raising booklets, leaflets, and posters. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided trauma-informed training on human trafficking in the context of visa issuance services to new diplomatic personnel. The government made some efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts, including awareness raising materials targeting potential buyers of commercial sex. The government had extraterritorial jurisdiction to prosecute Japanese nationals who engaged in child sexual exploitation abroad but, for the fourth consecutive year, did not report investigating any such cases. Several ministries continued to operate hotlines to identify potential trafficking cases; NPA reported no hotline calls lead to trafficking investigations, and other ministries did not report if calls resulted in the identification of any trafficking victims or trafficking investigations.

154,376 TITP workers entered Japan in 2023. The 2016 Act on Proper Technical Intern Training and Protection of Technical Intern Trainees mandated the MHLW approve work plans outlining living conditions, working hours, and other factors developed jointly by incoming TITP participants and their employers. The OTIT inspected new work plans and did not accredit 6,590 out of more than 326,267 work plans submitted during January through November 2023. Despite this initial screening, however, observers maintain that authorities did not fully implement oversight procedures to ensure unity among sending and receiving organizations’ contracts nor between these contracts and the participants’ work plans, resulting in language differences that left many participants vulnerable to labor abuses, including labor trafficking. The OTIT continued to inspect supervising and implementing organizations but were unable to provide data during the reporting period on how many of these organizations it inspected. The OTIT provided non-binding guidance to 420 employers for either retaining workers’ identity documents or not providing training according to their accreditation training plans. The OTIT punished 20 supervising organizations and employers for committing human rights violations, which could include prohibiting them from participating in the TITP for five years, and publicized their names, addresses, and reasons for punishment, including non-payment of wages and not following the accredited training plans, on government websites. The OTIT identified 402 cases in which actual working conditions deviated substantially from those employers had promised in accreditation plans, and the Commissioner of ISA and MHLW, revoked corresponding training plans. This was an increase from revoking 358 training plans in the previous year. For all these administrative actions, the government did not report whether the OTIT or MOJ identified any trafficking cases, or whether the OTIT or the MOJ referred any cases for criminal investigation. The government generally treated issues within the TITP, including abuse and exploitation, as personal disputes between the employer and employee or as administrative violations under the LSA rather than potential trafficking crimes. Civil society and international organizations continued to report the OTIT was understaffed and could not adequately screen participants or investigate allegations of abuse, including labor trafficking. Some participants reported the OTIT was unresponsive to requests for mediation when their employers suddenly changed or terminated their contracts. The OTIT had a hotline for TITP participants to report employment issues and seek assistance in their native languages but did not track how many were reports of potential human trafficking; the NPA operated an anonymous tip hotline and reported it received 194 reports of trafficking which resulted in no trafficking investigations, as compared with 191 reports received in the previous year.

The government completed an interagency review of the TITP with the goal of narrowing the divide between the program’s stated purpose of training foreign workers and reports of labor abuses. An expert panel created in 2022 to develop recommendations on reforming or abolishing the TITP, issued a final report in November 2023 recommending strengthening OTIT’s supervisory authority, tightening requirements on supervising organizations, and clarifying and expanding permissions for TITP workers to change employers. The panel comprised representatives from businesses, unions, academia, and lawyers, but did not include civil society members, although the MOJ and the panel held meetings with civil society. The government drafted legislation incorporating the panel’s recommendations to establish a new program to replace the TITP; the legislation was approved by the Cabinet in March 2024 and remained with the Diet for approval at the end of the reporting period.

The government maintained TITP MOCs with 14 labor-sending countries and signed a new MOC with Nepal in January 2024. MOCs remained the Japanese government’s primary tool to regulate recruitment practices, aimed at expelling foreign sending organizations found to have violated TITP legal requirements, and it held five meetings with sending countries through the MOCs. In 2023 the government reported 164 cases of sending organizations conducting “improper actions,” such as collecting deposits from interns, to MOC partner governments, who hold responsibility for investigating these cases, ordering corrective measures, and revoking agencies’ certification to recruit workers to the TITP. The MOCs remained largely ineffective, however, because the government reported it did not have an obligation to cease accepting TITP workers from sending countries whose governments insufficiently addressed abusive labor practices and labor trafficking crimes by recruiters and sending organizations, such as charging “excessive fees” known to place workers in high debt.

The government continued to implement the SSW visa program to fill labor shortages in 12 sectors, including construction, shipbuilding, and nursing care. Observers continued to express concern this program engendered the same vulnerabilities to labor abuses, including labor trafficking, as the TITP. SSW participants could change employers within the same category and could switch job type if covered by the same qualifying exam. TITP participants could only change employers in limited cases, such as verified human rights violations within the program. NGOs continued to report these structural and practical hurdles on TITP participants’ ability to change employers remained significant obstacles and tools for exploitation. The government did not report how many TITP participants filed applications to change jobs or how many applications it approved during the reporting period. NGOs previously reported authorities approved approximately 10 percent of applications of exploited TITP participants to legally change employers. Japanese law enabled for-profit employment agencies and individuals to become “registered support organizations,” via a registration system rather than a license system, to liaise between labor recruitment brokerages and employers. The law stipulated these organizations could collect fees from organizations to support SSW participants and prohibited imposing the cost to support on foreign workers. Observers reported these service fees could create additional risks for debt-based coercion among migrant workers entering under the auspices of the regime.

As reported over the past five years, human traffickers subject Japanese and foreign men and women to labor and sex trafficking and Japanese and foreign children to sex trafficking. Traffickers also transport victims from elsewhere in the region through Japan before exploiting them in onward destinations, including East Asia and North America. Traffickers subject male and female migrant workers, mainly from Asia, to labor trafficking, including at companies participating in Japanese government-run programs, such as the TITP. Japan’s fast-growing foreign student population is at risk for trafficking in the unskilled labor sector due to abusive and often deceptive work-study contract provisions. Men, women, and children from Northeast, Southeast, and South Asia, Latin America, and Africa travel to Japan for employment or fraudulent marriage and are subjected to sex trafficking. Traffickers use fraudulent marriages between foreign women and Japanese men to facilitate the entry of women into Japan for sex trafficking in bars, clubs, brothels, and massage parlors. Traffickers keep victims in forced labor or commercial sex using debt-based coercion – sometimes through debts from recruitment fees equaling more than one year of salary – and threats of violence or deportation, blackmail, confiscation of passports and other documents, and other psychologically coercive methods. Employers require many migrant workers to pay fees for living expenses, medical care, and other necessities, further increasing their vulnerability to debt-based coercion. Brothel operators sometimes arbitrarily impose “fines” on victims for alleged misbehavior, extending their indebtedness as a coercive measure. Traffickers exploit elderly foreigners in forced criminality by contacting them through job posting websites or social media and use religious- or retirement-based scams to defraud them into transporting disguised narcotics from African countries through Japan to the United States. In 2022, an international organization identified at least one Japanese labor trafficking victim in a Cambodian online scam operation.

Traffickers subject Japanese citizens and foreign nationals – particularly runaway teenage girls and boys – to sex trafficking. Often with ties to organized crime, Enjo Kosai, or “compensated dating” services, and variants of the JK business continue to facilitate the sex trafficking of Japanese children, as well as children from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of Korea, Laos, the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam. The pandemic caused a surge in unemployment and domestic violence, which increased the risk of some Japanese women and girls – especially runaway children – entering into “compensated dating.” JK bar owners may subject some boys and girls, including LGBTQI+ youth, to labor trafficking as hostesses and club promoters. Some “host clubs” – night clubs where female customers pay for the company of male “hosts” – exploit some female customers in sex trafficking by coercing them into commercial sex in order to pay off large debts incurred through deceptive and exorbitant billing practices. Highly organized commercial sex networks target vulnerable Japanese women and girls – in some instances those living in poverty or with cognitive disabilities – in public spaces such as subways, popular youth hangouts, schools, and online, and subject them to sex trafficking in commercial sex establishments, small musical performance venues, retail spaces, and reflexology centers, often through debt-based coercion. Some groups posing as model and actor placement agencies use fraudulent recruitment techniques to coerce Japanese adults and children into signing vague contracts and then threaten them with legal action or the release of compromising photographs to force them to participate in pornographic films. Some transgender children and adults seeking employment in unregulated urban entertainment districts as a means of financing their gender-affirming care are subsequently exploited in labor or sex trafficking. Private Japanese immigration brokers help Japanese-Filipino children and their Filipina mothers move to Japan and acquire citizenship for a significant fee; upon arrival, some of these individuals are subjected to sex trafficking to repay their debts. Organized crime syndicates posing as immigration brokers also lure these families to Japan with deceptive job offers and then subject the women to labor and sex trafficking in the nightlife industry. Japanese men remain a source of demand for extraterritorial commercial child sexual exploitation and abuse in Asian countries.

Cases of labor trafficking continue within the TITP. TITP participants from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, the PRC, India, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam have paid sending organizations in their home countries thousands of dollars in excessive worker-paid fees, deposits, or vague “commissions” over the last five years – despite bilateral agreements between sending countries and Japan aimed at curbing the practice – to secure jobs in fishing, food processing, shellfish cultivation, ship building, construction, textile production, and manufacturing of electronic components, automobiles, and other large machinery. TITP employers place many participants in jobs that do not teach or develop technical skills, contrary to the program’s stated intent; others place participants in jobs that do not match the duties they agreed upon beforehand. Some of these 400,000 workers experience restricted freedom of movement and communication, confiscation of passports and other personal and legal documentation, threats of deportation or harm to their families, physical violence, poor living conditions, wage garnishing, and other indicators of labor trafficking. Some sending organizations require participants to sign “punishment agreements” charging thousands of dollars in penalties if they fail to comply with their labor contracts, including for becoming pregnant. Participants who leave their contracted TITP jobs can lose their legal status if they do not report abuse and the government does not deem their case legitimate grounds for not performing their original employment, which traffickers use to coerce some into labor and sex trafficking. Some foreign workers within the SSW visa program – including former TITP participants – may be at risk for trafficking.