AIDS problem spreading to nation's remote rural areas
COVER STORY The Nikkei Weekly Week Ending January 25,
1992
AIDS
problem spreading to nation's remote rural areas
Local authorities blame
prostitution in underworld-run bars
BY MICHAEL SHARI Special to The
Nikkei Weekly
Until 10 months ago, Wanna was selling fresh
vegetables
in northeastern Thailand.
Then she sold herself into what a
Thai middleman told her
was a good deal.
Today, she and other
"hostesses" serve peanuts and beer and
snuggle up to customers in "snack
bars" in the quaint Japanese
resort town of Komoro.
"If I catch AIDS,
I'll give it to as many men as I can,"
she says with a sarcastic
laugh.
Wanna (not her real name) is one of 500-600 Thais and
Filipinas
who work in a nest of alleys in front of Komoro's railway
station.
Nestled at the foot of Mt. Asama, an active volcano, this
town
of 40,000 inhabitants in Nagano Prefecture may be the last
place
anyone would expect to find an AIDS problem.
But it has one,
according to local health workers and the town's
police chief, Rokuro
Shibuya.
And unless the town's illegal, highly profitable prostitution
industry is stam
ped out, Shibuya warns,
"AIDS will certainly continue to
spread."
With a derisive grin, he adds:"Unfortunately, some heads of
the
chambers of commerce say the presence of 500-600 prostitutes
benefits
the economy.
Isn't that a ridiculous statement?"
Known to locals as
Little Patpong (after the red-light district
in Bangkok), the alleys are
lined with the garish neon signs
of more than 100 small snack
bars.
Good for business
Taxi companies thrive on the fares
between Little Patpong and the
dozens of short-stay hotels that ring the
town, Shibuya says,
while supermarkets and other businesses also
profit.
The patrons - often businessmen on vacation or visiting
local
associates - pay around Yen 10,000 each for beer, peanuts and
other
snacks.
They spend Yen 3,000-5,000 on a taxi, Yen 5,000 for two hours
in
a room, and Yen 20,000 for an hour or two of intimacy.
An overnight encounter
costs an additional Yen 10,000, Yen 5,000
more for the room.
Like the
rest of the illegal sex industry that thrives in some
other small towns like
Komoro, the snack bars and the money
flowing through them are controlled by
the yakuza, Japan's
organized crime syndicates, Shibuya says.
During
the day, Komoro's alleys are as gray and jaded as
in red-light districts
anywhere in the world.
The women start to appear around 5 p.m. at a few Thai
restaurants and a Thai grocery store,
some looking only half awake after
a long night.
The women say they have almost no money of their
own,
except tips from customers.
They receive none of their earnings until
they work off
a debt of Yen 3.5 million ($28,000) each - the price
the
yakuza paid the Thai middlemen who sent them to Japan,
more than 20 times
Thailand's per capita income.
To make sure the women hold their end of
the bargain, the yakuza
confiscate their passports and valuables, the women
say.
"The girls start gathering in these places
before they start the
day," says a Japanese health worker
who gives blood tests to the
hostesses.
He is one of several in the local medical community
who are
concerned the town is a breeding ground for AIDS.
Unknown
number
But no one knows how many HIV carriers and full-blown AIDS
cases Komoro has.
The police have compiled hospital reports of only
two full-blown AIDS cases, both foreign women.
But the head of one
local clinic says it had two such patients
as of last March when one, a
Filipina woman, died.
Patients at his clinic and others in the town have
tested positive
for HIV, he acknowledges, but he refuses to say how
many.
"Journalists from all over Japan would converge on Komoro," he
says.
According to Dr. Tetsuro Irohira, an internal medicine
specialist
at nearby Saku Central Hospital, on full-blown AIDS patient,
a
Thai snack bar hostess, was referred to him last spring
by a health
clinic.
But when he tried to call her dormitory, he was told she
didn't
live there anymore.
"Either she escaped, or the yakuza took her
to another town
under a new name," Irohira said.
"That's what they do
when they have trouble with the girls."
Police
quiet
Loopholes in Japan's anti-prostitution laws prevent
Shibuya's
50-man force from clamping down, he claims.
Before they can act,
the police must receive a complaint.
"The women are afraid the middlemen
who sent them here will
take revenge on them or their families back home," he
says.
As in the rest of Japan, the Komoro police resort to
arresting
hostesses for immigration violations.
When arrested, they are sent to a
holding center in Tokyo.
But they are released prior to deportation,
and
they often disappear.
"Many return to prostitution voluntarily to
survive," Shibuya says.
As a last resort, Shibuya is urging a boycott of
the snack bars,
hoping to squeeze their profits and ultimately close them
down.
Komoro can survive on its existing tourist resources - Mt.
Asama,
hot springs, golf courses and the ruins of a castle, he
reckons.
Backing Shibuya is a new association of some 30 private
health
clinics, stores and other busunesses in Komoro.
In late December,
the group, Soyukai, raised concern over
the presence of HIV carriers in the
town, especially with the 1998
Winter Olympics scheduled to be held in
Nagano.
"The symposium will be showing at the time of the Olympics.
It
will be serious social problem," a Soyukai statement said.
The statement
also decried the violations of the foreign
women's human rights, and it said
international attention
could be expected to focus on the issue in
1998.
"Even though Southeast Asian people are poor and want to work
in
Japan, it's not an appropriate excuse for the Japanese
to use them for the
sex industry in Japan."
The problems go on.
Accordings to hospital
workers and Christian missionaries
in the neighboring town of Minowa,
half-breed children are
abandoned every year at the local hospital's
maternity ward
by Thai and Filipina hostess.
The missionaries say the
children are usually put
in state orphanage.
They are put out on the
street at adulthood,
often to join the yakuza.
"Japan has a timebomb
on its doorstep," says Roberta Rees,
one of the
missionaries.
"Torture"
Summontra is not worried about any
future timebombs.
She has enoughon her mind now.
Summontra (not her
real name) was an elementary school teacher
in northeastern Thailand until
four weeks ago, when she began
working in a Komoro snack bar.
She is drunk
on beer and tense from stimulants by 10 p.m.,
having just returned from a
hotel.
"He took me six times in the hotel room," she says.
"Torture."
The 24-year-old divorced mother says she knew she would
be
expected to sleep with Japanese men.
But she had no idea her passport -
which she admits is fake -
would be taken from her to keep her from
escaping.
"I always thought the Japanese would be kind at heart,"
she
say, sobbing.
"I never expected them to treat me this
way."
======
Photo: Police Chief Shibuya warns that AIDS will
spread unless tough legal measures are enacted to fight
the high-profit
prostitution industry.
Photo: IROHIRA
Photo: Thai hostesses sit
with a bar customer
in the vacation city of Komoro.
Doctors there fear
AIDS could spread from
the town's infamous bar district.
======