Twenty-Four Ways to Have Sex within the Law

Regulation and Moral Subjectivity in the Japanese Sex Industry

Bibliographic Data

ID6015442
AuthorsGerd Koch (0000-0002-4420-5652, Yale-NUS College, corresponding author), Gabriele Koch (Yale-NUS College, Singapore [email protected])
Year2021
Volume5
Issue2
Pages30-49
Publication date2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Legal Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1758-9584 • E-ISSN: 1758-9576
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/jla.2021.050202
OpenAlexW4214687749
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited17

This article argues that how sex appears in the law shapes what erotic pleasure is in a commercial context, and indirectly produces sex workers’ ideas about the moral stakes of engaging in certain acts. Although Japan’s anti-prostitution law was intended to eliminate commercial sex, the state’s mid-century attempt to define a proscribed site of sexual pleasure centered on intercourse instead led to the proliferation of erotic services in a diversified marketplace. The efforts of cisheteronormative sex industry businesses to navigate the actual conditions of the law’s enforcement have in turn made intercourse a distinctive site of concern for many sex workers, who regard it as the basis of an imagined moral hierarchy within the industry and as representing the inability of their workplaces to protect them

Context (archaeology · Enforcement · Geography · Hierarchy · Pleasure · Political science · Sex workers · Sexual intercourse · Sociology · State (computer science · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Social Psychology

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Open DOIOpen Access