Where the Bill Stands
Japan's plan to punish the people who buy sex, and not only the people who sell it, has reached the door of the Diet without a confirmed date to go through it.
On October 1 the government briefed the steering committees of both houses on its agenda for the extraordinary Diet session, which opened October 5. It said it would submit 21 bills, led by legislation to cut the consumption tax on food. Jiji Press reported that two measures were listed as "under consideration" rather than scheduled. One was a bill expanding the use of maiden names. The other was the amendment to the baishun bōshi-hō, the Anti-Prostitution Act of 1956.
The Ministry of Justice is still drafting. A Fukui Shimbun editorial published October 7 said the ministry is "accelerating" its work with submission to this session "in view." A Sankei Shimbun explainer on October 10 said the ministry is expected to move next to drafting the actual statutory language. Neither outlet reported a submission date.
What the Reform Would Do
The 1956 law bans prostitution but attaches no penalty to the act itself. What it punishes is the activity around the transaction: brokering, providing a place, and managing prostitution. It also punishes the seller's own public solicitation or waiting for customers, with up to six months' confinement or a fine of up to ¥20,000. Buyers face no penalty for soliciting.
According to the Sankei, police have recorded more than 200 solicitation cases a year for the past decade, a category that includes women waiting for customers on the street, known as tachinbo. In a Ministry of Justice survey of foreign systems covering New York, Nevada, Germany and South Korea, among others, Japan was the only jurisdiction that punished the seller alone.
The issue reached the cabinet last November. At a House of Representatives Budget Committee session, Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae was asked about the missing buyer penalty, and she told the justice minister to study how the law should regulate the trade. The ministry set up an expert study group in March. Its final report, adopted in September, recommended three things:
- Create some form of penalty for buyers who solicit.
- Keep the existing offense for sellers who solicit, and consider raising the ¥20,000 fine ceiling.
- Be cautious about criminalizing the sale of sex itself.
The Sankei said the likely model is a "symmetrical" rule that mirrors the seller-side offenses: street solicitation, following people, and luring through social media. The hard question is proof. The report flagged two problems. One is how prosecutors would show that a man walking the streets was there to buy sex. The other is whether simply answering a seller's approach should count.
Kyodo News reported that the trigger for the debate was something the 1956 drafters never anticipated. With the weak yen drawing more foreign visitors, Tokyo's Kabukicho district has become a destination for men approaching women on the street for sex, a trend Kyodo called the "touristification" of the area. The Fukui Shimbun cited a nonprofit that patrols Kabukicho. It said street negotiations through translation apps have become routine.
Two Forums, Same Hour
The day before the session opened, the two camps in the debate held their own events.
On October 4, sex workers and their allies held an emergency online symposium titled "STOP Kaishun Shobatsu" ("Stop Punishing Buyers"), reading the ministry's report critically. Bengoshi JP News reported that 442 people registered. At the same hour, Women's Action Network (WAN) held "Stop Seibaibai" ("Stop the Sex Trade"), a forum of legal scholars, sociologists and support workers that included sociologist Ueno Chizuko, professor emerita at the University of Tokyo.
Bengoshi JP quoted one of the organizers of the sex-worker forum, historian Kawahara Azumi, an associate professor at Fukuoka Women's University. She said the reform debate had exposed two positions: one treats sex work as labor, and the other treats the industry as violence against women to be abolished. She said no current sex workers were among the speakers at the other forum. "We reject a structure in which the law is revised without those affected taking part in designing the policy," she said.
Speakers argued that the "Nordic model," which treats sellers as victims and punishes only buyers, has pushed the trade out of sight in countries that adopted it and cut workers off from support services. Takeko Ai, a social worker with street-outreach experience, said the people outreach teams reach are often the ones who fear police and government. If buyers are punished, she said, "they will go further underground and turn away from us supporters as well." A representative of SWASH, a sex-worker advocacy group, said the work must be something people can do "healthily and safely" and also "quit healthily and safely."
The forum also heard that the general incorporated association siente had submitted a written request to the ministry. It argues that the law's first article, which frames prostitution as harmful to public morals, produces stigma. The Bengoshi JP report was written by Nakayama Misato, who is siente's representative director.
The Concern on Both Sides
The ministry's own panel shared the displacement concern. The Sankei and the Fukui Shimbun both noted that the report warns of one risk. If the trade moves away from public view, women face greater danger of violence and become harder for support workers to reach. The Sankei put it bluntly: if the tachinbo disappear from the curb only to reappear somewhere unseen, the reform is "counterproductive."
The panel heard from groups that wanted the seller's offense repealed. It declined, reasoning that some people sell sex by their own choice and that public solicitation harms the street environment. That leaves the reform where reformers on both sides said it should not be: the selling side stays punishable, and a new offense is added for the buying side.
The Fukui editorial cited Metropolitan Police Department figures. Of 112 women detained in 2025 for waiting for customers and similar offenses around Kabukicho, more than 60 percent gave host-club spending or luxury purchases as their motive. The paper said many had likely been driven to the street by debts run up on credit at host clubs, and it called for police and support agencies to work together.
What It Means for the Licensed Industry
The reform under discussion targets solicitation in public and online. It does not reach the licensed adult-entertainment businesses regulated under the fūei-hō, the Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Act. The 1956 law defines prostitution as intercourse with an unspecified partner for payment, and that definition excludes acts "similar to intercourse." The Sankei noted that the report did not change that.
Whether the bill reaches the floor this autumn depends on a session already crowded by the consumption-tax fight. If it slips, it moves to the ordinary session next year.
Sources: Jiji Press (October 1, 2026) for the government's briefing on the extraordinary-session agenda and the "under consideration" status of the Anti-Prostitution Act amendment; the Sankei Shimbun "News Q" explainer (October 10, 2026) for the prime minister's November instruction, the study group's three recommendations, the solicitation enforcement figures, the ministry's survey of foreign systems, the proof problems, and the statutory definition; Bengoshi JP News (October 8, 2026) for the October 4 symposia, registration figures and speakers' remarks; Kyodo News, as carried by the Kobe Shimbun and the Nishinippon Shimbun (October 5, 2026), for the inbound-tourism background; and a Fukui Shimbun editorial (October 7, 2026) for the ministry's timetable and Metropolitan Police Department figures. Glossary: baishun bōshi-hō = Anti-Prostitution Act; fūei-hō = Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Act; tachinbo = street sex workers waiting for customers. No bill had been submitted at the time of writing.