June 2004

June 2004 brought an international consequence to the narrator’s reporting on human trafficking: the U.S. Department of State placed Japan on a watch list of countries doing poorly at addressing the problem. Japan ranked only slightly above North Korea in willingness to act. The designation turned the issue into a matter of national embarrassment, which the narrator believed could spur the government to respond.

Watch-List Designation

The watch-list decision gave the reporting a public measure of the gap between official claims and action. The narrator felt gratified that the designation might pressure Japan to confront trafficking, and later that month was invited to speak at a U.S. Embassy symposium at United Nations University—not merely as a journalist, but as a participant. There, after a National Police Agency representative described Japan’s anti-trafficking efforts, the narrator challenged the account with his experience of obstacles encountered at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.

The Suppressed Report and Its Aftermath

The June designation was followed by a further effort to turn scrutiny into evidence of government responsibility. The narrator pursued a study on human trafficking in Japan conducted by the International Labour Organization with Japanese government funding. Its findings were sharply critical: Japan had failed to punish traffickers or care for victims, and the government had ordered the report kept from publication. The narrator obtained a copy through unnamed channels and secured a Yomiuri Shinbun front-page story on November 19, 2004, followed by another article the next day. A source said the coverage had prompted drastic revisions to a government plan of action, strengthening protections for victims; the narrator regarded that modest change as evidence that reporting could make a difference.

Victim Protection and the Limits of Enforcement

The public pressure and policy changes did not remove the obstacles faced by women caught in trafficking operations. In many cases, they could not identify who had exploited them, where they had been held, or the Japanese people involved. Police treated their limited Japanese and illegal work status as barriers to prosecution: once club owners were arrested, the women were often deported for visa violations, making it harder to pursue additional charges against traffickers. The narrator repeatedly urged police to consider offenses such as kidnapping, rape, and assault, but encountered the same circular answer: stronger cases required testimony, while deportation made that testimony harder to obtain.

The narrator had cultivated sources to reach victims, yet lacked the money and resources to investigate the people who exploited them. He began spending substantial portions of his salary to help women, sometimes arranging access to an abortion or paying airfare. He knew that this crossed the usual boundary of journalistic objectivity, but chose to become involved. The work also altered his private response to sex: amid the accounts of exploitation and his chronic fatigue, he lost interest in it.

The effort to hold the perpetrators accountable nevertheless had concrete results. The drug squad took an interest in Slick, raided his clubs, and his business eventually closed. Information provided to Japanese Customs officials and Dutch police led to Viktor’s imprisonment; the narrator also heard that local yakuza had attacked him for encroaching on their territory. These outcomes came through several routes of pressure and investigation, while the wider difficulty of protecting victims and securing testimony remained.

The Recruitment Scheme Behind the Reporting

Veronika’s account gave the broader trafficking debate a concrete human and financial structure. Recruited in Poland through an online advertisement promising hostess work in Japan, she was told she could earn one hundred U.S. dollars an hour. She left her six-year-old daughter with her mother and traveled to Tokyo, where Viktor initially presented himself as a helpful intermediary. At an apartment in Nishi-Azabu, she was told to place valuables, including her passport, in a drawer for safekeeping; the next day, Viktor and Slick took her to Den of Delicious and informed her that the work would involve sexual services, not the hostess job she had accepted.

The arrangement made refusal costly and escape difficult. Viktor and Slick charged her daily for the apartment and imposed other debts, including the cost of her flight. When Veronika tried to leave, she found that her passport and return ticket were gone. Viktor told her that she could be arrested as an illegal alien if she went to the police, while warning that her family could be reached. Although a shop manager eventually helped her recover her documents, she had no money to return home; other women in similar circumstances discussed approaching the police but backed away, fearing arrest, legal expenses, or imprisonment. Their experiences show why the public question of trafficking could not be separated from the practical risks confronting the women expected to testify.