The porn industry has become more popular with the advent of the internet and the industry has been fishing in a lot of money. It is now readily available on the internet. Many stores also sell takeaway DVDs at a very high price. This has resulted in a highly profitable industry. The display of such adult content on television or the internet is looked down upon in society. This kind of duplicity has been common in India. In fact, porn is also blamed for the rising count of rapes in India.

According to a 2011 IMRB Survey, one out of every five mobile users in India uses their 3G internet for accessing porn. In fact, over 47 percent of students discuss porn every day, according to a public school survey by Max Hospital in Delhi. These numbers speak volumes about how much the porn industry impacts the lives of people.

Over the years, the education of children regarding sex has always been held as being necessary. However, what people don’t talk about is the toll it takes on certain women and children who end up being the victims of human trafficking. According to Miss Rawal, who is a professional in Delhi said, “Porn belittles women more than anything in the world. Treating females purely as an object for personal sexual satisfaction is all porn ever evinces. I hope it is declared illicit at least in Indian society.”

How Porn and Human Trafficking are Related?

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime defines human trafficking as any situation where an individual is forced, coerced, abducted, deceived, or abused. If any of these qualifiers are present, the situation will be considered human trafficking. Human trafficking takes place on many fronts in the porn industry; although due to the way in which porn is produced and distributed, it can be extremely hard to identify the presence of such trafficking along with its source.

Survivors of sex trafficking are often subjected to many kinds of abuses and more than one form of exploitation. In order to control it, traffickers take incriminating photos of their victims to their family members to shame them more. They also attempt to sell the content by uploading it to mainstream porn sites. In addition, victims are also exploited through prostitution.

In many other cases, victims are exploited solely for the purpose of producing pornographic content.  Many NGOs have been responsible for finding victims of trafficking. These missions have also provided evidence of the existence of such heinous acts. In a very recent rescue known as Operation SCOPE, investigators have seen this type of trafficking first-hand, and they have managed to provide the police with evidence of pornographic content being sold by traffickers.

In the mainstream porn entertainment industry as well, the recruitment and employment of actors have been the result of deception, threats, and drug abuse.

According to research conducted by the Internet Watch Foundation, 95 percent of the nearly 133,000 URLs assessed were hosted on platforms that allow people to create and upload porn.

If a pornographic video of a survivor or victim of trafficking is uploaded to any website, both the uploader and the website profit from it, even though the content is freely available. According to recently collected data, 90 percent of the free porn websites and nearly 100 percent of porn websites that require payment get the content from outside sources. Even if the users are able to upload any sort of porn content for free, the website owners will be able to profit just from the traffic flow that is generated to the website.

The line between legal pornography and human trafficking is very different from each other. There is a thin line between them which gets complicated. Most of the popular porn sites today have been seen featuring illegal content. They even go as far as featuring videos of rape victims.

A recent campaign was launched against Pornhub, which happens to be the largest porn website in the world. Many have joined this movement and advocated that the website be shut down. Pornhub features many cases of human trafficking, including the rape of a 14-year-old girl. They also display child sexual abuse.

Globally, the porn industry is a $97 billion industry where the US accounts for 12 billion of it. In 2017, the International Association of Internet Hotlines (INHOPE) was able to trace certain online child sexual abuse material to over 70 countries in the same year and more than 60 countries in the year 2018. Top porn entertainment companies, like Pornhub, advertised and received a huge amount of content from countries all over the world. Every year, Pornhub manages to release a report that shows the statistics from the top 20 countries. Human trafficking in the porn industry is something that cannot just be isolated to just one location. Sadly, pornography of trafficking survivors have been spread all over the world and are available with only a click.

Human trafficking in the porn industry is very different from the prostitution industry. It is something that is happening every day, but it is not dealt with in a proper way. There are many NGOs that work to find and help such victims of human trafficking. The millions of people who are fighting for the closing of the Pornhub website are also trying to help in their own way. Many women and children are tortured for this. The porn industry isn’t kind to any actors nor are the human traffickers. However, with the help of some NGOs, we can hope to reduce this kind of trafficking.

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SUICIDE PREVALENCE IN JAPAN 

Sign board at the entrance of Aokigahara Forest (Suicide Forest) that beg suicidal visitors to think about their loved ones and to seek help if they’re considering taking their life in the forest

For years, the Japanese had failed to identify depression and problems of the mind as legitimate problems and ignored them persistently. It is only in recent times, perhaps owing to a wider worldview provided by the 21st-century global world, that these problems which are as common in Japan as any other part of the world have come to light.

Japan ranks among the top countries in terms of a number of deaths by suicide. In 2019, the death of approximately 20.1 thousand people was recorded by suicide, and although the figure has significantly reduced from the previous years, it’s still quite high. In fact, suicides have been such an accepted fact in Japanese history that a forest called the Aokigahara Forest is deemed as a ‘suicide forest’ where people go to kill themselves, mostly by hanging themselves to the trees of the forest.

The large scale of suicides that Japan witnesses every year, can perhaps be attributed to some distinct factors, although there is bound to be exceptions, given the very personal nature of such tragedies.

❖ Cultural and Historical practices: For the longest time, Japanese culture has identified suicide as not a sin (unlike Christianity) but rather as a way of taking responsibility for one’s actions. Far from being deemed as tragic or feeling the need to reduce its rates, the Japanese often interpreted suicide as honourable. This notion was perhaps the by-product of the ‘seppuku’ practices followed in the Samurai tradition, according to which the Samurai’s ritual suicides were honourable. In recent times, these ideas that romanticize suicide has been discarded to an extent, and a greater emphasis on mental health has acquired more importance. 

❖ Financial Reasons: Statistics suggest that young men between the age of 22-40 are most commonly the victims of suicide and this is attributed to the financial problems brought about by unemployment and employment on the basis of short term contracts.

❖ Isolating technology: Japan’s culture of not complaining further increases the troubles for individuals. Not being able to express one’s feelings adequately, and further, the introduction of newer technologies, isolate people to an extent that they might become helpless.

❖ Karoshi which means ‘death from overwork’ is one of the most prominent causes of suicide in Japan. The term was invented in the 1970s as a result of a number of deaths that had been brought about by work-related stresses and pressures. However, it still remains quite persistent in contemporary times. Numerous studies on work culture have brought into light the collectivist and hierarchical nature of Japanese society, unlike the western societies which are individualistic and non-hierarchical. What this means for Japanese society is that in order to move up the hierarchy in their work status Japanese people often tend to overwork themselves so as to please their bosses and maintain group harmony.

THE ROLE OF YAKUZA IN JAPAN

Men donning Yakuza style tattoos | Credit: Jorge/Wikimedia Commons

The avenue of organized crime in Japan has been dominated by the Yakuza, known as bōryokudan or gokudō, for years. These Yakuza groups are primarily mafia-like criminal organizations whose existence is deeply entrenched in Japanese history. These groups were at their glory in the 1960s with gang membership of about 184, 000 but in the 21st century, it has been reduced to about 80,000 members. The Yakuza comprises of several gangs which are affiliated to about 20 conglomerate gangs, of which the Yamaguchi-Gumi is the largest.

Living up to its name of a criminal organisation, the Yakuza engage in a number of shady activities including extortion, blackmail, smuggling, prostitution, drug trafficking, gambling, loan sharking, day- labour contracting, and other rackets. But the control of the Yakuza over Japan stretches across different fields, even unlikely ones such as entertainment industries, restaurants and bars and taxi companies, and other major factories and businesses. Unsurprisingly, the Yakuza are also involved in international crimes.

One of the major activities that the Yakuza are known to engage in is Drug trafficking especially of methamphetamine, although such activities are only condoned by some gangs and others such as the Yamaguchi-Gumi strictly disapprove of such actions. Perhaps even further down the moral scale than drug trafficking, the Yakuza are infamous for engaging in human trafficking in extensive scales. Often young girls from small villages are persuaded to come to big cities by the Yakuza, who promise them good jobs and respectable positions in the society, but in reality, forcing them to become sex workers after they arrive. They also follow a practice of extortion specific to Japan, known as ‘sōkaiya’ which basically means a protection racket.

However, the Yakuza’s relationship with Japanese society is more complex than it might seem to appear in the first glance. While some natives are completely repulsed by the idea of the Yakuzas, others perceive it as a form of a necessary evil. The possible reason for this may be the Yakuza’a existence in Japanese society for hundreds of years and also some philanthropic deeds that the Yakuza has undertaken for the people of their nation. For instance, during the Kobe Earthquake of 1955 and the Tsunami in 2011, the gangs took up the task of delivering and distributing essential supplies to victims. While the Yakuza has certainly evolved into a relatively more crime-free group compared to it’s earlier manifestations, the nature of the group and its relationship with Japanese society still remains complicated, especially the one between the police and the Yakuza, both of which, much suspect work hand in hand.

THE NIGHTLIFE IN JAPAN – PROSTITUTION RINGS

Prostitution (baishun, i.e, selling spring) declared illegal by the Japanese government is present in Japan, on an extensive scale. Their existence which is in direct contradiction to the law, is perhaps possible by their affiliation and control by the Yakuza and also perhaps due to their covert means of operating. The Japanese government in the second half of the 20th century had banned prostitution, but this ban catered to only a narrow definition, i.e, intercourse in exchange of payment, therefore living ample space for functioning of oral copulation, erotic massages, etc, which are therefore entirely legal. This, these activities along and even intercourse, is a largely occurring event in the nightlife of Japan. Tokyo, for example, is believed to have one of the largest red-light districts in the world. Pink salons that specialize in oral pleasure are common and so are some shady ‘spa’ businesses which carry out such activities, under an innocent pretext.

Photograph of girls working in pleasure house “Sakuraya” in port town of Yokohama

Most of the prostitutes are trafficked slaves, and what’s even more sickening is the child prostitution prevalent in Japan. The legal age of consent for a girl in Japan is 13, so most underage sex is protected by law, and often conveniently blame the girls, as inviting it upon themselves. The child prostitution racket in Japan, often called the JK Trade is perhaps embedded in the Japanese culture of sexualizing young girls, which is evident in the craze over maid cafes, and the way young girl’s bodies are represented in anime and manga, all of which are a very prominent part of Japanese Culture.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, it may well be understood that Japanese culture, is not as bright and cheery as it may seem at first glance. It is an undeniable fact that therefore, that there is another side to the coin, i.e, while Japanese culture is rightful to boast about its many vibrant festivals and whatnot, the dark side of Japan primarily represented by the existence of Yakuza and its role in Japanese society, Suicide prevalence in Japan and prostitution rings along with other issues such as poor economy, sub-standard educational and bureaucratic system and high rising prices, are ever-present.

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