Open Secrets, Unspoken Arrangements–Who Benefits, Who Pays the Price
“That’s what they all say,” whispered a young Filipina to her older companion in their native tongue. I heard the remark and understood its implication. She thought I was lying.
We sat across each other in a four-seater on a local train in Belgium in 1992. I was on my way to the Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe to attend a week-long seminar on the history and future of the then European Community (EC), now European Union.
I was a student in Copenhagen, I told them. She replied in a hush tone that every Filipino there claimed to be one. She then looked me in the eyes and said, “Good for you.” She sounded a bit sarcastic, yet her delivery also felt like some coded invitation.
She paused, as if giving me a chance to reveal my immigration status. As though she was about to reveal a hidden network of people who could help me. Instead of explaining myself, I asked them what they did. Something told me they were on their way to work even though it was late in the afternoon.
Again, the younger of the two spoke plainly that they cleaned office buildings after hours— like everybody did. I must have appeared surprised. So, she added that all Filipinos there worked the same job. As if to put me at ease, she told me about one lawyer who had to start that way too when he decided to stay for good.
Not My First Time
The same exchange happened six years earlier in Tsukuba, an academic city 68 kilometers (42 miles) northeast of Tokyo, Japan. I had only been there for a week in 1986. I needed to go food shopping at the neighborhood grocery store. There, ahead of me at the cash register, were two young Filipinas. They saw me struggling to communicate with the cashier, so one of them volunteered to interpret.
When I caught up with them, the same dialogue script unfolded. I told them I was on the teacher training program. They did not believe me. They thought I came as an entertainer – like them and like everybody else.
It was no secret by the mid ‘80s that young Filipino women sought employment in Japan as singers and dancers. Celebrated as a life-changing opportunity, the “Kōgyō” or entertainer visa, represented a golden ticket to earn Japanese Yen.
The Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. institutionalized manpower export as national policy in his 1974 Labor Code. Initially designed as a temporary stop gap economic measure to ease domestic unemployment and dollar shortage, the Labor Export Policy (LEP) remains to this day.
The first wave of construction workers, engineers, and service personnel left for oil-rich countries in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia. Japan, however, still banned accepting unskilled foreign manual laborers. So, Filipinos could only work there as entertainers. Filipino women trained and auditioned to receive the three-month “Kōgyō” visa. In Japan they worked hard to get the visa extended for a maximum six-month stay under each contract.
Not many Filipinos knew, however, that women ended up working as bar girls in a “Firipin Pabu (Philippine Pub)” soon as they arrive.
Filipino Entertainers in Japan
Highly skilled Filipino singers and musicians had been performing in Japan since the 1920s. The arrival of the jazz age to the rest of the world created a demand for Filipinos who could sing in English. The post-war U.S. military base boom came in the 1950s. Filipino cover bands became staple western-style entertainment in military clubs and high-end cabarets across the country.
Japan’s spectacular economic growth after WWII surpassed West Germany by the 1960s. The Japanese economy rose to become the second largest among capitalist nations, trailing only the U.S. Japan held on to this ranking until 2010. Not surprisingly, Japan was an aspirational overseas employment destination for Filipino women, especially those not ready for domestic work or educated in nursing.
When I arrived in Japan, it had only been a year since the 1985 Plaza Accord agreement among the wealthy G5 countries. Meant to correct the trade imbalance, the agreement saw the Japanese yen double in value relative to the U.S. dollar. So, those Filipino ladies I met at the grocery store were not the only ones savoring upward mobility. Everyone in Japan feasted on their prosperity.
After securing enough savings, ordinary Japanese and corporations went on buying sprees. Corporate expensing included footing the bill for nighttime entertainment, an incentive for their overworked employees–the salarymen.
Institutionalized Open Secret
Earlier in the 1970s, newly affluent farmer and salaryman groups went on organized sex tours to Asian destinations for “entertainment.” Starting with “Kisaeng Tourism” to South Korea, the euphemism was the co-opted Korean word for “courtesan.” Going on a tour to visit “kisaeng” was seen as a reward, a corporate-sanctioned treat, for hard work.
Corporate leaders, like their WWII military counterparts, viewed the act of providing access to sex as a human resource amenity. It was a way for their men to fulfill a basic need while their punishing work schedule kept them away from home. Subsidizing annual all-male retreats was just part of their patriarchal duty. After all, workers had given their life to the “Kaisha” (company) to build Japan’s economy.
Travel agents marketing sex tours as “Ian Ryokō” (“Relaxation Trip”) soon found welcoming “destinations” in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Thailand. Local ground-handlers were more than willing to supply women. With the receiving country governments complicit, the lucrative sex tourism flourished.
Meanwhile, a Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) investigation in 1980 showed that only 10% of the money paid by Japanese tourists went to women. The 90% were revenues divided among the Japanese travel agency, airline, local destination management company, and political cronies who built the fancy hotels.
By the late ‘70s, activist Yayori Matsui (1934-2002) and Asian women’s groups in Japan and the receiving countries began protesting. By exposing the exploitation of women and shaming tour participants at airports, these protests threatened to disrupt the cozy arrangement that sustained this transnational sex industry.
Governments in destination countries, albeit dictatorial or post-military themselves, performatively made statements to maintain plausible deniability. But as it was in any open secret, insiders knew enough to pretend not knowing.
Without any formal acknowledgment of the trade, the Japanese government acted before further geopolitical backlash. The Japanese Ministry of Transport issued an “Administrative Guidance” (Gyōsei Shidō) to travel agencies, quietly directing them to adjust their “visuals” and strategies: clean up brochures and reduce group size for less visibility.
Anti-sex tourism protests, political uncertainties in destination states, and the rise of the yen led to a policy shift. Instead of exporting men, Japan started importing women.
Only I Did Not Know
The 1981 Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act (ICRRA) indirectly opened the floodgates. The “Kōgyō” visa existed before the Act. But its re-classification of singers, musicians, and dancers from “Unskilled Labor” to its own skilled professional category circumvented the ban on foreign unskilled labor. Promoters could now sponsor Filipino “talents” (performers) freely.
As a young academic in the 1980s, I only knew about the “Overseas Contract Worker (OCW)” from symbols of success that returnees displayed upon coming home. Not until the ‘90s when numbers grew and the term switched to “Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW)” did I pay attention.
Naturally, I knew nothing about the Japanese “mizu shobai.” Euphemism for nighttime alcohol and adult entertainment, it literally meant “water business.” So, I also misunderstood the word, “Japayuki.” Without insider information, I was clueless of its negative connotations. I simply thought, like many, that it stood for an OFW showcasing Filipino singing talent in Japan.
Words Unspoken
Before my departure to Japan, I ran into a young math instructor who I knew trained there. I complemented her. Or so I thought. I referred to her as the college’s “Japayuki,” joking that she must have been good at singing too.
Little did I know that the word “Japayuki” was far from polite. To everyone in Japan, it was a euphemism for a sex worker. She asked me not to call her that or use it ever again. The local equivalent was the Filipino word “hostess”, for someone working at a cabaret club.
In fact, Japan has a word, “kyabakura,” for the same setting. A Japanese portmanteau (or blended word), “kyabakura” combines “cabaret” and “club” to describe a hostess club. It is a licensed establishment where the primarily male customers pay a time-based fee to drink and converse with female staff members known as kyabajō (“cabaret girls”).
The “kyabajō” pour drinks, light cigarettes, and sing karaoke. They drink, eat snacks, and flirt with clients to keep them entertained and returning for more. A “japayuki” was the non-Japanese, primarily Filipino, “kyabajō.”
Sexual services are strictly forbidden in this business model. But there, just beneath the surface, is more fiction to uncover.