| Japan is a land full of euphemisms.
One of my favorites is enjo kosai,
which translated literally means "compensated
dating". What it really means is schoolgirl
prostitution. It doesn't refer to the
under-age girls working in the sex or
pornography industries; there are plenty
of young runaways who find their way to
working as sex-workers, and it is not
unheard of for loan sharks to force their
debtors to have their daughters turn tricks
to pay off the debt, what enjo kosai
refers to is free-lance, amateur prostitution
by junior high, and high school girls.
Media interest in enjo kosai peaked
in the 1980's, the height of the economic
bubble, and the materialism that flourished
in Japan at that time is blamed for the
lax morality of these schoolgirls, for
while Japan has a long history of young
girls entering prostitution, traditionally
this was done to support their poor families,
whereas today's schoolgirls choose paid
sex to enable the purchasing of designer
and brand name goods. The exact number
of girls practicing enjo kosai
is hard to fix, media scare stories of
the eighties gave the impression that
every other girl was doing it, but a reasonable
estimate would be 5%. That figure would
still mean the equivalent of every classroom
having a teenage prostitute. Indicative
of Japan's morality and materialism, one
survey of 14 and 15-year-old girls found
that 20% of them saw nothing wrong or
immoral in enjo kosai. Shibuya,
an area of Tokyo, is renowned as a place
where middle-aged men visit to "date"
schoolgirls, but the preferred method
of meeting is through internet dating
sites and cell-phones. A new law was passed
recently making it illegal to solicit
anyone under 18 for sex, and convictions
have increased slightly since then, notably
of policemen and schoolteachers, but Japanese
men have a firmly established Lolita Complex,
so enjo kosai is unlikely to disappear
or even diminish. |