Bill Mihalopoulos. Sex in Japan's Globalization, 1870-1930

In parallel with American popular culture's longstanding fascination with the figures of the geisha and the Japanese prostitute, there is a wealth of scholarship from a number of disciplinary perspectives on prostitution in Japan. Bill Mihalopoulos's historical study focuses on the years between 1870 and 1930, a period of rapid economic development, with particular attention to Japanese women who performed sex work outside Japan. Mihalopoulos regards sex work as a legitimate economic option for poor women, and he stresses the autonomy and the agency of prostitutes. He writes to rescue sex workers, not from traffickers, but from their fellow countrymen, who have treated these women as a national disgrace, a “stain on the flag of Japan” (p. 127). Mihalopoulos deplores how now, as in the past, campaigns against overseas prostitution disqualify the poor from respect. He draws parallels between the aims of reformers in developing Japan and the policies supported by the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. Christian right, and radical abolitionist feminists.

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