• Vigorously investigate and prosecute sex and labor trafficking and seek adequate penalties for convicted traffickers, which should involve significant prison terms.
• 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.
• Enhance screening to ensure victims – including all children exploited in commercial sex and migrant workers under the TITP, the Specified Skilled Worker Visa (SSW), and future ESD program – are identified and referred to services and not inappropriately penalized solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct resulted of being trafficked.
• 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 and future ESD program, on other visa statuses, and in immigration detention.
• Increase resources for the care of trafficking victims, including survivor-centered shelters with freedom of movement and services for foreign and male victims.
• 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 or future ESD program 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 sentence of no less than four years’ imprisonment.
• Ensure employers are not permitted to retain the passports or other personal documents of any foreign worker, not just SSW, TITP, or ESD 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 extraterritorial commercial child sexual exploitation and abuse overseas.

The government made mixed law enforcement efforts.

Japan did not have a comprehensive anti-trafficking statute, instead criminalizing 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 ($640) if fraudulent or coercive means were used, or up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to ¥100,000 ($640) if force or threats were used. The law defined “prostitution” to only apply to sexual intercourse, and did not prescribe penalties for buyers of commercial sex. Article 8 of the same law increased penalties to up to five years in prison and a fine of up to ¥200,000 ($1,280) 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, a fine of up to ¥3 million ($19,130), 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 ($19,130). Civil society organizations reported the definition of “forced labor” under the LSA was narrower than the definition of human trafficking and that, in practice, the government did not treat cases charged as “forced labor” under the LSA as human trafficking crimes. In addition, the LSA did not apply to domestic workers or to businesses that employed only relatives that lived together, including family-operated farms. 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 and international organizations reported the lack of a formal definition of human trafficking in Japanese law and 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. Attorneys 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. Observers reported even in cases where the government formally identified trafficking victims, officials prosecuted perpetrators under lesser, non-trafficking charges, such as for promoting illegal employment. 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. The government reported efforts to enforce the law prohibiting the confiscation of TITP participants’ documents, but reports of confiscation of passports continued. Observers reported an acute lack of awareness of trafficking among key law enforcement and judicial stakeholders.

In 2024, the National Police Agency (NPA) and the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) investigated 58 suspected traffickers in 97 cases, compared with 56 suspects investigated in 115 cases in 2023. In 2024, the government initiated prosecutions of 47 alleged traffickers (46 for sex trafficking and one for labor trafficking) compared with 42 alleged traffickers prosecuted in 2023 (39 for sex trafficking and three for labor trafficking). Prosecutions of 25 defendants were ongoing at the close of the reporting period; this included cases from 2023. The government convicted 33 traffickers (32 for sex trafficking and one for labor trafficking) – the same number convicted in 2022 and 2023. Of the 33 convicted traffickers, 28 received sentences of imprisonment ranging from seven months to 14 years, 17 of which were fully suspended; courts sentenced five traffickers to only a fine. For at least the eighth consecutive year, courts issued either fully suspended sentences of imprisonment or fines to most convicted traffickers (67 percent, compared to 72 percent in 2023). The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking crimes. The “Prostitution Prevention Act” did not penalize purchasers of commercial sex, and civil society reported in practice this resulted in law enforcement not investigating or arresting buyers of commercial sex acts in cases involving adults, including in cases in which offenders purchased commercial sex acts from trafficking victims. Observers reported that lack of political will to revise the “Prostitution Prevention Act” to penalize purchasers of commercial sex, including from potential trafficking victims, may have been attributed to the prevalence of retired law enforcement and political officials having economic ties to the commercial sex industry.

None of the prosecutions and convictions involved labor trafficking within the TITP, however the government reported referring one case of potential labor trafficking within the TITP to the public prosecutor. 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 sentencing them with adequate penalties that include terms of imprisonment. The government maintained 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 maintained 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, officials confirmed law enforcement did not investigate or prosecute cases involving child commercial sexual exploitation under trafficking statues because, in practice, authorities did not consider or formally identify children in commercial sexual exploitation as sex trafficking victims if no means of force, fraud, or coercion was involved in control of the child and/or facilitated commercial child sex acts. This practice deviated from the scope of child sex trafficking set forth in international law, which does not require means of force, fraud, or coercion. In 2024, the government referred 416 cases of “child prostitution” to public prosecutors involving at least 290 suspects and 283 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 577 and 956 cases per year from 2018 to 2023). In 2024, the government arrested five suspects in one case 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. Law enforcement officials cooperated with foreign counterparts in the investigation of one case resulting in the arrest of three suspected traffickers who were charged for harmful job placement instead of trafficking crimes. However, foreign counterparts also reported Japanese law enforcement regularly did not respond to attempts to share information about potential trafficking cases and failed to investigate cases with clear indicators of human trafficking. The government continued to provide anti-trafficking trainings to various ministries, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Immigration Services Agency (ISA), OTIT, NPA, MOJ, and MHLW on trafficking laws and regulations.

The government maintained insufficient protection efforts.

The government identified 66 trafficking victims (58 sex trafficking victims and eight labor trafficking victims), compared to 61 trafficking victims (48 sex trafficking victims and 13 labor trafficking victims) identified the previous year. The government identified 17 women, 33 girls, and eight boys as sex trafficking victims, as well as one man and seven women as labor trafficking victims. All of the labor trafficking victims were foreign nationals, and one sex trafficking victim was a Japanese citizen exploited abroad. Separately, NGOs and international organizations identified 15 women foreign national sex trafficking victims and seven men foreign national labor trafficking victims.

The government maintained 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. Observers reported difficulty assessing the government’s referral process due to poor communication and noted a lack of sufficient efforts to proactively identify and protect victims. NGOs 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. 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 – compared with two TITP participants identified as victims as a result of self-reporting to officials in the previous reporting period – and continued only to identify a fraction of “children in prostitution” as sex trafficking victims. 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 that facilitated commercial sex acts. Due to authorities’ misunderstanding of sex and labor trafficking and insufficient victim screening and identification procedures, the government did not take effective measures to prevent the inappropriate penalization of potential victims solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked, including immigration violations and commercial sex offenses. Civil society organizations reported that while in practice police typically did not arrest women for commercial sex offenses, they would still take them into custody to dissuade them from commercial sexual activities. This, as well as the penalization of selling but not purchasing of adult commercial sex acts, resulted in potential sex trafficking victims being unwilling to report their exploitation to law enforcement due to fears of arrest for crimes traffickers forced them to commit.

In 2023, the most recent year in which data was available, 9,753 TITP participants disappeared from their jobs, some of whom fled exploitative or abusive conditions. 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. ISA did not report screening apprehended “missing” TITP participants for trafficking indicators, including prior to their deportation. Some labor contracts featured illegal automatic repatriation clauses for interns who became pregnant or contracted illnesses while working in Japan. Immigration authorities conducted 18,521 screening interviews of TITP participants departing Japan prior to the end of their contracts, compared with 13,723 screenings in the previous year. The MOJ did not report whether immigration officials identified any trafficking victims during these interviews; 13 TITP participants interviewed by authorities reported their departure was forced, and NGOs reported 42 cases of supervising organizations or employers carrying out or attempting to carry out compulsory departures of TITP participants during January through December 2024. NGOs reported OTIT claimed its jurisdiction did not extend to the protection of workers transitioning from the TITP to the SSW, creating a gap in the protection of foreign workers exploited in forced labor.

Authorities did not consistently identify children – including children in commercial sexual exploitation – as victims of sex trafficking when cases did not involve force, fraud, or coercion, contrary to the scope of child trafficking under the 2000 UN TIP Protocol. 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 screened or identified as child sex trafficking victims. Because authorities believed sex trafficking required evidence of coercion, potential child sex trafficking victims were often not perceived to be victims. Instead, authorities identified them as delinquents who voluntarily agreed to engage in sex acts. Observers reported the government’s child protection efforts were focused on rehabilitating vulnerable adolescents, not on protecting victims from and seeking judicial recourse against traffickers.

Officials reported the government did not provide protection services specific to trafficking victims; instead, all victims of trafficking were referred to comprehensive general services for adult or child victims of crime. 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 12 of the 66 identified trafficking victims to care, including five sex trafficking victims (one woman and four girls), and seven women forced labor victims; the government did not refer any male victims to care. This was compared with 12 referrals of women and girl sex trafficking victims and seven referrals of women labor 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. The physical conditions and services in these facilities were reportedly poor and overly restrictive. WCOs in less resourced prefectures sometimes advised or required women and children seeking shelter to take leave from their jobs or schooling, reportedly for their safety and the shelters’ security. 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 individuals who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. No government shelter could accommodate male trafficking victims, but the MOJ and OTIT could place male victims in temporary emergency accommodations on an ad-hoc basis. Victims could file civil suits to seek compensation from traffickers, but – as in previous years – the government did not report whether any did so. NGOs reported the appellate court issued a judgement in April 2024 to award restitution including unpaid wages and damages to seven trafficking victims who appealed dismissal of these claims by a lower court in February 2023 – no payments had been made by the end of the reporting period. Civil society reported authorities did not refer Japanese trafficking victims to legal support organizations specializing in human trafficking. Some employers pressured TITP participants, including potential trafficking victims, to leave their labor unions to reduce their chances of seeking recompense for labor abuses committed against them; NGOs reported authorities did not refer foreign workers seeking assistance to worker support organizations, including unions, or screen them for trafficking, instead advising them to seek resolution through the supervising organizations overseeing their employers.

The government reported foreign trafficking victims were legally entitled to the same benefits as Japanese victims; however, lawyers reported 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, and officials from one agency were sometimes unaware of or unable to tell victims about available services provided by a different agency. 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 operated a legal support program that provided information on the legal system, connected victims with attorneys, and provided loans to cover legal fees, but this program was only accessible to victims of crime who were registered residents of Japan and required victims to repay these loans; most foreign trafficking victims could not meet these requirements. The government provided residency permits to seven trafficking victims in 2024. No permits were provided in 2023 because no identified victims were found to be in violation of the Immigration Control and Refugee Act. 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 increased efforts to prevent trafficking. Overall efforts to prevent trafficking, particularly 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. In accordance with the NAP, the government also held two conferences with anti-trafficking NGOs for information sharing on trends and best practices. The NPA allocated ¥29.93 million ($190,820) for anti-trafficking activities, including for anonymous reporting services, training, public awareness campaigns and events, and prefectural police investigative activities. The government also allocated ¥1.21 million ($7,710) for a project on combating the sexual exploitation of children, potentially including sex trafficking.

Authorities continued to raise awareness of trafficking by disseminating information online – including on the NPA’s website and the government’s public relations website – and through radio programs, posters, and brochures, as well as through leaflets distributed at airports and to NGOs, immigration and labor offices, and diplomatic missions in Japan and abroad in multiple languages. In June 2024, as part of the government’s “Awareness Month for Foreign Workers” campaign, ISA conducted educational activities and distributed leaflets and posters to the public and business community on measures to prevent illegal employment when hiring foreign workers and raise awareness of labor trafficking indicators. The Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office and MOJ respectively spent ¥2.12 million ($13,520) and ¥4.58 million ($29,200) on awareness raising booklets, leaflets, and posters. MOFA provided trauma-informed training on human trafficking in the context of visa issuance services to new and mid-career diplomatic personnel and officials at domestic passport offices, as well as to some embassy security and support staff. The Japan International Cooperation Agency partnered with governments in the Mekong region to strengthen anti-trafficking networks and with the Government of Cambodia on building trafficking victim assistance capacity. 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 fifth consecutive year, did not report investigating any such cases, despite media reports that Japanese nationals engaged in this activity during the reporting period. Several ministries continued to operate hotlines to identify potential trafficking cases; the government reported no hotline calls led to trafficking investigations, victim identification, or referral to care. The NPA operated an anonymous tip hotline and reported it received 67 reports of trafficking, which resulted in no trafficking investigations, as compared with 194 reports received leading to no trafficking investigations in the previous year.

In June 2024, the Diet passed the Amendment Act of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act and the Act on Proper Technical Intern Training and Protection of Technical Intern Trainees in part to establish a new ESD program to replace the TITP, to come into effect within three years of passage. The government began cross-ministry development of the ESD program and consultation with experts, including labor management organizations and lawyers; development of the new program will include an accreditation system for foreign workers, a license system for supervising and support organizations, and reorganization of the OTIT into the new Employment for Skill Development Organization. The TITP is expected to continue accepting new participants until 2027, and those participants may remain in the program through 2030. In 2024, 147,922 TITP workers entered Japan. The 2016 Act on Proper Technical Intern Training and Protection of Technical Intern Trainees remained in effect, and mandated the OTIT 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 4,490 of out 321,983 work plans submitted during 2024. 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; OTIT reported conducting 26,153 inspections from April 2023 through March 2024, the most recent period for which data was available. The OTIT was unable to provide data on how many times it provided non-binding guidance to employers during the reporting period but reported either providing guidance for retaining workers’ identity documents or not providing training according to their accreditation training plans 3,448 times from April 2023 through March 2024, the most recent period for which data was available. The government revoked the accredited training plans of 12 employers for committing human rights-related violations, but did not report if any employers licenses were revoked; punishment of these violations could include prohibiting them from participating in the TITP for five years, and publicizing 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 nine 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 compared with revoking 402 training plans in the previous year. The government reported referring one potential labor trafficking case to the public prosecutor’s office for criminal investigation, but it was unclear if the case resulted in any administrative actions. The government often resolved issues within the TITP, including abuse and exploitation, as administrative violations under the LSA rather than 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. It reported assisting TITP participants by providing lodging for 166 cases due to their employer’s potential wrongdoing. Worker protections provided under the LSA did not apply to domestic or agricultural workers on family-owned farms.

The government maintained TITP MOCs with 15 labor-sending countries and signed a new MOC with Timor-Leste in November 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. The government held two meetings with sending countries through the MOCs in 2024. In 2024, the government notified MOC partner governments of 81 cases of sending organizations collecting excessive fees from interns; MOCs placed responsibility for investigating these cases, ordering corrective measures, and revoking agencies’ certification to recruit workers to the TITP on partner governments. 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, and maintained SSW MOCs with 17 labor-sending countries. 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 when their status of residence changed upon promotion to a higher level within the program, or in limited cases based on “unavoidable circumstances,” such as verified human rights violations within the program. In November 2024, the government reported it created measures to improve efficiency and flexibility of the TITP process for changing employers and clarify what constituted “unavoidable circumstances.” However, NGOs continued to report structural and practical hurdles on TITP participants’ ability to change employers remained a significant factor in the exploitation of these workers. The government did not report how many TITP participants filed applications to change jobs or how many applications it approved. 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.

Trafficking affects all communities. This section summarizes government and civil society reporting on the nature and scope of trafficking over the past five years. Human traffickers exploit Japanese and foreign men and women in labor and sex trafficking and Japanese and foreign children in sex trafficking, domestically and internationally. Traffickers also transport victims from elsewhere in the region through Japan before exploiting them in onward destinations, including in 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. Traffickers use fraudulent job offers in the entertainment sector 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. Traffickers exploit Japanese citizens, including children, in forced criminality and forced labor in online scam operations in Burma and Cambodia.

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 China, 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” and commercial sex. JK bar owners may subject some boys and girls, including youth who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, to labor trafficking as hostesses and club promoters. Some “host clubs” – night clubs where female customers pay for the company of male “hosts” – work with organized crime groups and sex-related businesses to 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. Some “host clubs” and “boys clubs” also exploit male hosts through debt bondage. 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. These networks also target vulnerable Japanese boys and subject them to forced criminality to commit fraud and scams. 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. Traffickers – including Japanese and Chinese organized crime groups – subject Japanese women to sex trafficking overseas, promising high earnings for commercial sex acts and then subjecting them to debt bondage for travel and fees, and sometimes abandoning victims in foreign countries. Some Japanese women are coerced into sex trafficking overseas to pay off debts to “host clubs.” Japanese men remain a source of demand for extraterritorial commercial child sexual exploitation and abuse in Asian countries. Media reported the number of foreign men traveling to Japan to purchase commercial sex acts, primarily through street-based solicitation, has increased due to social media, and civil society reported the number of children exploited in sex trafficking is increasing. Foreign visitors are likely engaging in commercial child sexual exploitation and abuse in Japan.

Cases of labor trafficking continue within the TITP. TITP participants from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam have reported paying 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. Some TITP employers place 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 – are at risk for trafficking.