Eating and drinking without money, shoplifting… The sad background of crimes committed by “migrant sex workers

Continuing from Part 1: Confessions of a “Dekasegi Sex Work er,” we will look at the realities of sex workers who head for the countryside.

How much do these dekasegi sex workers earn?

Except in tourist areas such as Okinawa, it is said that their income is lower than that of those who work at sex stores in the city. Since the price per customer is low and the number of customers is also small, it is said that the daily wage rarely exceeds 20,000 yen if the store is an off-the-books type. The monthly salary would be in the 200,000 to 300,000 yen range.

Even though the dormitory fees are low, the conditions are not good considering that they have to eat out and have to pay for various other expenses. If you get sick and cannot work for a while, or if you are addicted to luxury brands or host clubs, saving money will be a dream come true. A woman in her 30s who has experience as a dekasegi sex worker tells us.

I don’t think that dekasegi is something you do to save money. It’s like they have no choice because they don’t have the ability to work in the city. So, compared to the city stores, there are quite a few girls who are mentally damaged.

More abysses at the bottom: ……

After all, these girls are not unaffected by the problems of housing and mental health.

To understand migrant sex workers, we must look at the problems they face.

It is often said that “the sex industry is the last safety net. This is because women who have fallen into the shadows of society and have nowhere else to go manage to survive by selling their bodies.

However, the sex industry is a world where individual power is more important than in the general business world. Weak people are also kicked down and cannot survive in the city’s sex industry. At the bottom of such a society, at the further depths of the abyss, is the migrant worker.

The following words of a manager of a brothel can also be said.

There are many girls who are making the rounds as dekasegi in the local sex industry, and I worry about whether they will be able to survive. For example, there are many girls who cannot even buy bread at a convenience store when asked to do so, or who say they have eaten nothing but strawberry milk juice and melon bread for more than 10 years.

These children are living in a state of complete disconnection from their families and hometowns. They have no one to turn to, and they don’t even realize that they are crazy. They are not able to calculate money or save money, so they spend all the money they have. So once they start migrating, they often have no choice but to live as migrant sex workers until they get short-changed somewhere.

Sometimes our store’s dormitory is full of girls like that. At times like that, I think to myself, “My place is like a welfare facility. It’s like a local welfare facility called a sex club, with kids with problems running around in circles.

Unconventional Crimes

One migrant sex worker who has left a lasting impression on him is a woman in her 40s who came to work for him several times over the past 15 years. She was obviously disabled and her age was such that I thought it was time for her to stop working in the sex industry. Then, she stopped showing up.

About six years later, the woman suddenly appeared and asked me for a loan. She looked like a wreck. When I asked her about it, she told me that since she could no longer work at the brothel, she had been living in jail or prison, deliberately committing petty crimes that would be unthinkable, such as eating and drinking without paying for a cup of tea or shoplifting an apple, to secure food, clothing, and shelter.

When I heard this episode, I thought about the difference between men and women. There are some male disabled people who fall through the welfare safety net. Many of them end up working day jobs to make ends meet, but when that becomes difficult, they become homeless or become progressively disabled, consciously repeating minor crimes and living in and out of jail for most of their lives.

Women, on the other hand, have the option of prostitution in addition to day jobs. If they fall through the cracks, they can become migrant prostitutes. Sooner or later, however, there will be a limit to such a life. At that time, they will probably become women with cumulative disabilities, as described by the manager, and live a life that is like going back and forth between prison and the shabba.

Dekasegi sex workers support local brothels. However, it may be said that many of them are “young homeless” who have fallen out of the urban competition.

Although their lives are rarely illuminated, they are sure to become a major issue for society in the future. We need to consider them more as a social issue.

We are looking for people in their 10s to 40s who have no permanent home. We are looking for actual experiences of people who have lost their housing, either now or in the past, such as people living in cars, Internet cafe refugees, migrant sex workers, day laborers living in dormitories, people living in hotels, people living in stores, people living in support facilities, or people who are providing support for these people. Anonymous or other conditions are acceptable, so please contact the author.

Kota Ishii (Author) Twitter @kotaism

Email postmaster@kotaism.com