Teppei Kasai is a senior Asia program officer and Stacey-Leigh Manuel is the deputy women's rights director at Human Rights Watch.

Following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's directive in November 2025 to examine "the necessity of penalizing the buyers of prostitution," a Justice Ministry panel reviewed the country's Prostitution Prevention Law. Its September 2026 report, in which none of the members objected to introducing regulations for people who solicit to buy sex, stopped short of calling for criminal penalties.

In practice, the burden of the law falls on those selling sex, most of them women. Police arrest people for soliciting to sell sex every year, while those soliciting to buy face no penalty. Many people, including members of the panel, see this as unfair, and it is -- but the unfairness lies in punishing sex workers, not in failing to punish their clients.

With a reform bill expected, the Japanese government should use this opportunity to protect sex workers' rights. Research by Human Rights Watch and others shows that criminalizing consensual adult sex work -- either its sale or its purchase -- undermines sex workers' safety and access to justice.

The 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law penalizes soliciting to sell sex: People approaching potential clients on the street, waiting in public for them, or advertising can be jailed for up to six months or fined up to 20,000 yen (around $125). Anyone arranging a transaction, providing a room to be used for prostitution, or running a business based on prostitution can face far heavier sentences. Because the law covers only intercourse, a large part of Japan's sex industry, offering other sexual services, operates legally under a separate licensing system.

Some advocates in Japan are calling for an "end-demand" approach, often called the "Nordic model," first adopted by Sweden in 1999, which criminalizes buying sex while removing penalties for selling it. Supporters see selling sex as inherently harmful to women and hope to end it by eliminating the demand.

But criminalizing clients can undermine sex workers' safety. When clients fear arrest, they insist on meeting in hidden places, such as parks at night, cars or unfamiliar apartments. Sex workers lose the chance to assess a client beforehand; work where others can hear them call for help; or leave a client's details with a friend. With fewer clients, those who remain can demand riskier conditions, such as sex without a condom.

Research by the international humanitarian organization Medecins du Monde found that France's 2016 introduction of penalties for buyers created a fear of arrest among clients that forced street sex workers into dangerous locations. Soon after, there was a spike in murders, with 10 sex workers killed in France during a six-month period.

Police officers and local officials patrol the area around Okubo Park in Tokyo's Kabukicho district on Oct. 10, 2024.

© Kyodo The end-demand approach also leaves in place laws that punish anyone who helps sex workers or works alongside them. In Japan, that may mean two sex workers who share an apartment to work more safely together could be charged with providing a place for prostitution.

The law would also cut off sex workers from the people who help keep them safe. A friend who passes on a client's number, or someone who drives a sex worker to an appointment, may be charged with arranging it. A landlord who finds out a tenant sells sex could have every reason to evict them.

More fundamentally, the law rests on a moral judgment, that sex work "harms human dignity" and "disrupts good public morals," rather than on consent. It treats an adult who chooses to sell sex and a person who is forced to do so as the same. That lets police target consenting adults, while doing little to focus on real exploitation. Japan should distinguish consensual adult sex work from trafficking, forced labor, and sexual exploitation of children, and protect everyone against violence and exploitation.

Research by Human Rights Watch, academics, public health journals, anti-trafficking organizations, United Nations experts, and sex workers' groups in many countries has documented that criminalization of either the sale or the purchase of sex exposes sex workers to greater violence and deters them from going to the police, while doing nothing demonstrable to reduce trafficking. The U.N. Working Group on discrimination against women and girls has called for the full decriminalization of adult voluntary sex work.

Japan should repeal the Prostitution Prevention Law and fully decriminalize consensual adult sex work, including its purchase and nonexploitative arrangements that enable sex workers to work together safely. Other laws should continue to prohibit trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, violence, and sexual exploitation of children, and close any gaps the repeal would leave. Police should promptly investigate reports of rape, assault or coercion without penalizing survivors for selling sex.

Decriminalization should also go hand in hand with treating sex workers like other members of society. They should have access to labor protections, healthcare, housing and public benefits without discrimination. Access to essential services should not depend on stopping sex work.

The government should meaningfully involve sex workers and sex worker-led organizations in designing these reforms. Japan has a chance to replace a law rooted in moral judgment with one rooted in consent, safety and rights. It should take it.