Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex: The Union of Militarism and Prohibitionism

This essay examines the relationship between US policy toward commercialized sex, known as the ‘American Plan’, and postwar Japan’s prohibitionism in the context of changes in the global management of commercialized sex over the course of the 20th century, and reconsiders the meaning of prohibitionism for feminism. It draws on the existing literature on prostitution from Japan and abroad, the publications of the International Abolitionist Federation (IAF), and the records of local governments, among other sources. In the first section of this essay, it examines the details of the American Plan, which constitutes the United States’s first clear institutionalization of prohibitionism during World War I. In the following two sections, it turns to the influence of the American Plan on the reorganization of the Japanese prostitution system during the Occupation era, and the participation of Japanese feminists in that process. Finally, the essay concludes by problematizing the affinities between the system of prostitution prevention and the US–Japan security alliance. 1