Kaoru Aoyama

This chapter aims to familiarise the reader with both the particularity and the universality of the subject of migrant Thai sexworkers. In the first half, I will introduce the debate on prostitution that has been dividing feminists into two camps, with recent developments in English-language, Thai and Japanese contexts.

I don’t remember her name. She was a Thai woman, or rather a girl, I thought at the time; tiny and fragile. The whole time I sat in front of her through the glass wall she looked as if she was just about to say something. But she didn’t say much, and I didn’t say much. I was too ignorant. I didn’t know what to say, what to ask, how to ask. I composed general questions: ‘Are you feeling alright?’; ‘Do you need anything?’; ‘Do you want me to ask someone to bring something next time?’ and things along those lines. I remember she said she wanted to read a Thai magazine, anything written in Thai. She was speaking in Japanese because I didn’t speak Thai but also because speaking in other languages was not allowed in custody. A warden was sitting on her side of the visiting booth, not looking at us but alert to any sound or movement. What else could she say, should she say at all, anyway? She didn’t know me and I didn’t know her. I remember I thought she was pretty, with spots on her cheek...

The sex industry in Japan is said to be thriving. For migrants working in the sex industry, the situation is different and worse because their undocumented status in the matter of immigration control causes further exclusion by putting them outside the scope of the protection of state legislation. This chapter argues that this discourse is inherent in the social consciousness of the Japanese general public, and that this logic, albeit mostly intended well-meaningly to rescue migrants from trafficking, causes more danger to them by socially excluding and, in effect, depriving them of much chance to activate their agency, ability to act against or comply with the situation. The author explains first how the chapter, by shedding the light on migrant sex workers' situations, contributes to the focus of this edition, the work of intimacy, vis-a-vis how intimacy is generally assumed in Japanese social consciousness. Keywords: Japan; migrant sex workers; sex industry; social consciousness