Development of Human Trafficking Research and Issues: For the Human Trafficking Studies in the Context of Japan as Receiving Country

This paper considers alternative perspectives for discussion on human trafficking in Japan as a receiving country. Despite anti- trafficking movements by the Japanese government and NGOs, there are not sufficient theoretical perspectives in the Japanese academic disciplines. First, I survey the discussion within Japanese gender studies, and present its limitations. Second, I follow the stream of discussion from western feminism. Human trafficking has been referred mainly from the perspective of prostitution. Consequently, this limits the discussion on human trafficking only towards the experiences of women in the sex industry. Recently, the perspective from migration has developed an alternative discussion. This grasps human trafficking within women’s migration, and focuses on the impacts of anti-trafficking movements on women’s migration and calls attention to actors in the process of migration. In addition, it shows the need to analyze human trafficking not only from women’s experiences at the micro level, but also from the mezzo level involving migration systems and campaigns by NGOs, and from macro level pers pectives of international organizations and the organization of a state. In Japan, it is necessary to analyze human trafficking from the perspective of migration on various levels, and such analyses from the position of a receiving country can deepen the discussion on human trafficking