Lucrative Feudalism

When the god Kamo Myojin descended to earth on the island of Nippon some 3,000 years ago, he brought prostitutes with him and installed them in a shrine. There and in neat, cherry-blossomed houses, they flourished as honored licensed entertainers, even after 1946, when Douglas MacArthur ordered the Japanese government to curtail the business.

Last week a Labor Ministry survey reported that prostitution has seldom been as lucrative as it is today for Japan's 124,289 registered shogi and 25,000 streetwalkers. In Tokyo, where the nightclubs are the plushiest, girls often make $100 a week, compared to $8 for the average secretary. From 1946 to 1953, American G.I. expenditures on the girls boosted the Japanese economy by an estimated $85 million a year, eight times the amount of money spent by dollar tourists.

One Japanese movie producer who offered movie contracts to eight Tokyo dance-hall hostesses reported: "They were sorry, but they said they could not afford to give up their present work."

City agents still roam the impoverished farms in the Japanese countryside, "contracting" the services of farmers' daughters. Despite growing opposition to the ancient custom, such arrangements apparently are quite acceptable in the rural areas. Said the Labor Ministry report: More than two-thirds of the parents interviewed by government researchers in two prefectures felt that prostitution was a "proper occupation" for their daughters. Many approved on the grounds that the girls "couldn't find any other job which could support the whole family."

But if it was all right with the profit-making Japanese parents, it was not satisfactory to the Labor Ministry. Concluded the report: "The moral insensibility of mothers in rural areas who are constantly threatened by poverty and privation . . . is a major factor in preserving, if not encouraging, the human traffic practices that best symbolize the feudalistic darkness of Japan."

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