Indentured Prostitution in Imperial Japan: Credible Commitments in the Commercial
Sex Industry
Author(s): J. Mark Ramseyer
Source: Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization , Spring, 1991, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring,1991), pp. 89-116
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/764879
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity andfacilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available athttps://about.jstor.org/terms

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

JLEO, V7 Nt 89

Indentured Prostitution in Imperial Japan: Credible
Commitments in the Commercial Sex Industry
J. Mark Ramseyer
University of California, Los Angeles

I'm glad we won
a flower for a dollar
I'm mad we losta flower for a dollar-Japanese children's song

1. Introduction

So interpreted, the song makes no more sense in Japanese' than in English.
But in its first two lines are two puns: "win" also means "buy," and "flower"
can mean "girl." Thus the song can also mean "I'm glad we bought a girl fora dollar." As in Mother Goose, the macabre is historical: Peasant families in

pre-20th-century Japan [like peasants in medieval Europe (Engerman,
1973:44)] bought and sold children. "I'm glad my parents bought for me,"the child sings, "a sister for a dollar."I received helpful suggestions from far more than the usual number of generous readers: N.
Abrams, W. Alford, P. Arenella, H. Baerwald, T. Bryant, W. Comanor, K. Crabb, R. Fretz, M.
Fruin, S. Garon, C. Goldberg-Ambrose, W. Klein, L. Lynn, H. Motomura, M. Nakazato, G.

Noble, H. Ooms, H. Patrick, I. Png, M. Polinsky, R. Posner, A. and R. Ramseyer, E. Rasmusen,

R. Romano, F. Rosenbluth, A. Rosett, R. Sander, G. Schwartz, H. Scogin, R. Smethurst, F.
Upham, J. Wiley, O. Williamson, N. Wyse, S. Yeazell, two anonymous referees, and participantsin the UC Berkeley Workshop in Institutional Analysis, the UCLA Political Economy Workshop,

the Yale Law, Economics, & Organization Workshop, the SSRC-UCLA Japanese Legal History
Workshop, and the Pacific Roundtable on Industry, Society, and Management. I received financial

assistance from the UCLA School of Law Dean's Fund and the UCLA Japan-U.S. Research andExchange Program. In conducting the research, I received help from the library staffs at UC
Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Hiroshima University, Hitotsubashi University,
University of Michigan, Tohoku University, and Tokyo University. The views expressed in thispaper are mine; I know for a fact that many people gracious enough to comment on earlier draftsof the article disagree with the approach.
1. "Katte ureshii/hana ichimonme/makete kuyashii/hana ichimonme."? 1991 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. ISSN 8756-6222

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

90 The Journal of Law. Economics, & Organization. V7 N1

If some premodern Japanese peasants sold their children, some are said tohave indentured their daughters to brothels. At the same time, many womencontracted to become prostitutes independently, and did so through long-term
employment contracts. In this article, I examine a more moder version ofthese various contracts of the macabre: the employment arrangements among
parents, prostitutes, and brothels in the commercial market for sexual services
in early 20th-century Japan. More specifically, I examine the use of indentured
prostitution agreements-contracts in which a prostitute agreed to work at abrothel for several years in exchange for a large advance on her future earnings. Prostitutes and brothels have used these indenture contracts in a variety
of societies, and I use data from Japan to ask why.
Prostitution in pre-World War II Japan was a regulated industry, and it was acontroversial industry. For precisely those reasons, government records andindependent studies together yield an astonishingly candid set of empirical
records. Accordingly, I first use those records to recover and reconstruct thecontractual arrangements themselves. In doing so, I describe both the deals
the parties cut and the way they enforced those deals.
Second, I study the most common hypothesis about these indentures-thatthe brothel owners offered the contracts because they could manipulate themin a way that tied the prostitutes to the brothel beyond the stated contractual
term (because, in short, the owners could transform indentured servitude into
debt peonage). I find no evidence for the hypothesis. Instead, I find that many
prostitutes repaid their advance substantially before the end of their terms andquit early. Indentured prostitution was a harsh job, but it was a job women
took for only a few years.
Third, I examine two additional hypotheses about the contracts: (i) that they
enabled the brothels to control prostitutes, and (ii) that they (like the indenturecontracts that brought thousands of Europeans to North America) provided
credit to destitute peasants. Although these hypotheses may capture somefacets of the Japanese prostitute indentures, I explain why they do not suffice.

Instead, I contend that prostitutes and brothels used the indenture contracts
for a different set of reasons. First, the contracts enabled brothel owners tomake credible their promises about future earnings to the women involved(and, sometimes, their parents) (Williamson, 1983, 1985). The owners foundit advantageous to make these promises because the recruits were entering an
industry where they would suffer a certain and substantial reputational loss,
but where they would earn a wage about which they had little reliable information. Second, the contracts enabled the owners and prostitutes to allocate
the costs of invoking the legal system to the party able to do so most cheaply.
That brothels and prostitutes would create such arrangements suggests, ultimately, that scholars would do well not to let the brutality of prostitution blindthem to the effective ways peasant women and men make the most of badsituations.2
2. See the books by Judith Walkowitz and Barbara Hobson (Chapter 4) for evidence ofrational self-assertion by prostitutes in 19th-century England and the United States.

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 91

Given the politically charged nature of prostitution and indentured servitude, more than the usual disclaimers may be in order. First, and mostobviously, this article is a study in the history of the organization of anindustry, and not a normative essay. I take no position in this article onwhether societies should legalize prostitution.3
Second, for lack of data, I also leave unanswered one basic empiricalquestion: How often did Japanese women choose to become prostitutes on
their own, and how often did they do so under family pressure? On the one

hand, prostitutes earned reasonably high incomes, and many women werepoor. Some women independently chose the job simply because it paid somuch. On the other, some women took the job under parental pressure.
Although I find evidence that such pressure mattered less than often alleged,
the evidence is too tentative to justify any conclusion.4 Other research doessuggest that some peasant families share risk by pooling incomes (Popkin: 1822, Rosenzweig and Stark), and some daughters probably joined the brothels
as part-albeit a bitter part-of such a family insurance scheme. Parents or
wealthy neighbors often did guarantee the prostitute's debt (though they could
well have done so even when the woman chose to become a prostitute on herown).5 For expositional simplicity-but only for that purpose-I describe theemployment arrangement as though the women involved consistently chose itthemselves.

Third, I deliberately ignore most contemporaneous narrative accounts ofJapanese prostitution. To date, almost all histories of the industry have reliedon firsthand accounts of reformist journalists, abolitionists, and ex-prostitutes

rescued by those abolitionists. Necessarily, the prostitutes who approached

3. Compare, for example, Shrage and Pateman (prostitution should be banned) with Okin
and Radin (some forms of prostitution should be allowed).
4. Note that even though prostitutes could legally quit whenever they pleased (Section 3.2,
infra), most worked until they had either repaid their debt or served their full term. From 1927 to

1929, for example, only about 1 percent of all licensed prostitutes quit their work without thebrothel owner's consent (It6:213-4). Yet if their parents had signed the indenture contract (as theygenerally had), then the only cost of quitting was that they and their parents became liable on thenote. And if the parents had forced them into prostitution, their parents would have taken theadvance and the prostitutes themselves would have been left judgment proof. Effectively, then,the prostitutes' only real risk was that the brothel owner would seize their parents' assets. As aresult, women forced into prostitution by abusive parents could have walked away from theirjobs, left their parents to repay the debt, and faded into the anonymity of metropolitan Tokyo.
Admittedly, often it may have been a dauntingly grim prospect. Yet if large numbers of parents
coerced their daughters into prostitution against their will, one would expect a significant numberof women regularly to abandon the job-and opt for that cold anonymity over the job they had
leamed to despise and their parents who had sold them into it. Almost none, however, ever didso.

According to the Salvation Army, 31 percent of the women it "rescued" from jobs as inden
tured prostitutes in 1930 reported that they had been induced to take the jobs by their pare

(Kakusei, 1931b).

5. Note that under the prewar Civil Code, men and unmarried women could contract on t

own if age 20 or older. [Mimp6 (Civil Code):? 3]. Men and women under the age of 20 could ncontract without the consent of their guardian (Mimpo:? 4).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

92 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization. V7 N1

the abolitionists were among the most dissatisfied, while the women who
uneventfully fulfilled their indenture terms wrote few books, articles, or evendiaries about their experience. As a result, the extant narratives present enor-

mous problems of sample bias. Issues of balance also plague quantitative
records, to be sure. Yet because prewar Japanese prostitution was both regu-

lated and controversial, both government agencies and abolitionists spentmassive resources counting the people and money in the industry. Surprisingly, perhaps, these quantitative records corroborate each other on most criticalpoints. I use those records where they converge; where they do not, I note thatdivergence.
The article proceeds as follows. In Section 2, I outline both the conventional accounts of prewar Japanese prostitution and the basic contours of theindustry. In Section 3, I trace the evolution of the regulatory scheme involved.
In Sections 4.1-4.3, I ask how the indenture contracts actually worked, and,in Sections 4.4 and 4.5, I explore why the contracts were so common. The
regulatory scheme did not survive the 1950s, however, and I trace its collapse
in Section 5.

2. Scholars and Prostitutes

Most scholars explain prewar Japanese prostitution through what they consid

er "exploitative" economic growth. Consider social historian Mikiso Hane.

Relying heavily on journalistic reports, Hane claims a "growing chasm

separated rich and poor in prewar Japan (34): " [T]he condition of the peasantsremained pathetic in contrast with the growing well-being of bourgeois capitalists," and peasants thus found themselves waging "a bitter struggle forsurvival" (31, 27). Within this impoverished world, some of "the most pitiful

victims . . . were the young farm girls who were sold to brothels" (207)
Anthropologist Liza Dalby studied the licensed entertainer-prostitutes
known as "geisha," and tells a similar story. The geisha, she writes, live

decent lives only compared with the lives ordinary licensed prostitutes (sh6gi)
lived: "Dreadful as life was for [the geisha,] they were yet better off than th

girls who were sent not to geisha houses but to brothels" (222). In part, that
dreadfulness resulted from the way the geisha house used indenture contracts
to tie the women to it. Like many scholars of prostitution elsewhere,6 Dalby
suggests that the Japanese house owners manipulated the contracts to turnprostitution into debt peonage-and keep the women working beyond th

original term. Trapped with "unscrupulous owners who charged the inmate
exorbitant rates for room and board, intentionally keeping them in a state odependence," the geisha worked in "virtual captivity" (221).7
Fact or fiction, the stories sold newspapers and magazines, and contempo-

6. See, for example, Corbin (78) (France), Harsin (293) (France), O'Callaghan (13) (China),
and Rosen (130) (United States).
7. Note, however, that most women apparently received room and board free. See Section 4,
infra.

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 93

rary reporters made the most of them. Journalists told of naive women trickedby usurious brothel owners into a life of vice, tied by a debt that increased by
the month. It was thinly disguised slavery, they argued, and the government

should ban it. Most moder scholars merely repeat these accounts. Even
Japan's eminent legal sociologist Takeyoshi Kawashima concludes that theprostitutes were caught, through "the power of the patriarchal family system," in "slavery" (1950:89, 1955).
It was not all fiction. Many families were poor in prewar Japan. Theinternational depression hit the country early and hard, and may have hit thecountryside hardest of all.8 Given the alternatives, some peasant women did
become prostitutes. Those who did so often contracted to stay at a brothel forseveral years. In exchange, they received much of their salary in advance.
Whatever virtues it lacked, the vice was a major industry. In 1924, Japan
had 550 licensed red-light districts, 50,100 licensed prostitutes, and 11,500

licensed brothels. These brothels were substantial businesses, not streetcorer pimps. Most typically, they served food and drink besides sex, andwere large 15- to 16-room establishments that carried 4 to 7 prostitutes and 6
to 10 additional employees on staff. In addition, Japan had 77,100 licensed

geisha. The number of unlicensed (and hence illegal) prostitutes is less clear,but one otherwise reliable observer placed the figure at about 50,000. With apopulation of 59.7 million, Japan apparently had 1 prostitute for every 350
people. In the city of Kyoto, the figure was 1 for every 150.9 By contrast, inthe moder United States, scholars estimate the figure at 1 for every 650 to

900 (Symanski:10).
As harsh as prostitution was, the women who became prostitutes were not
women with many attractive alternatives. Most licensed prostitutes were
badly educated. Notwithstanding that all were at least 18 years old, half had
fewer than five years education and 16 percent had not been to school at

all?0-this at a time when 99 percent of all Japanese primary-schoolage students (grades 1-6) were in school (Minami:19). Such unskilled anduneducated workers had few attractive choices in prewar Japan, for thecountry was poor. Consider one survey of 12- to 18-year-old night-school

students: Among those with factory jobs, the modal student worked 10hours a day; among those with commercial jobs, the modal student worked
12 hours (and that they found time for school suggests they worked shorter
hours than most). Of all students, only 13 percent worked fewer than 28

8. See the trend in farm household income in Table 1, infra. Scholars have often exaggerated
this poverty, however, as Smethurst rightly points out in his excellent book.
9. The figures are from Fukumi (26-28, 32, 50-56, 178). Fukumi estimates the total numberof licensed and unlicensed prostitutes at 174,000 in the mid-1920s. Nakamura (222-23) places
the total at 276,000. See also Kusama (14-26).

10. See Fukumi (66-68) (Tokyo data), Ito (204), and Kusama (100-03). Licensed prostitutes
were required by law to be at least 18 years old [Naimu sh6 rei (Home Ministry Order) No. 44,
Oct. 2, 1990, ? 1].

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

94 The Journal of Law. Economics. & Organization, V7 N1days per month.ll Prostitutes on average had 2.54 customers per night in
1924,12 and likewise worked about 28 nights per month.13 Prostitution was
sordid work. But the alternatives were not easy.

And prostitution did pay well. Consider Table 1: From 1926 to 1932,
prostitute earnings averaged 179 percent of the mean female factory worker's

wage,'4 and 53 percent of the total mean income of farm households (anaverage of both landlords and tenants).15 Oliver Williamson (1985:35-8) andPrice Fishback (1986a, 1986b, 1989) recently discussed how Americanminers received higher wages when coal companies provided unsanitary or
unsafe conditions; Clark Nardinelli showed how British parents received higher wages for their children when a factory used corporal punishment. Much of
the same logic applied in Japan. Japanese peasant women faced an array of
options, among which a job as a prostitute was one of the most squalid andstigmatizing. In exchange for taking the job, they demanded-and receivedhigh pay. According to one 1934 sample of female workers from a northern
prefecture, young women who left home to work earned room and board plus
a mean 884 yen per year as a licensed prostitute, 575 yen as a geisha, 518 yen

11. Only 13 percent had more than two days off per month (Shakai, 1936:23-25). This isroughly consistent with Ohsato's data for the country as a whole: in 1926, workers in manufactur-

ing industries worked 10.32 hours per day, 27.1 days per month. See Ohsato (58-61); see also
Naikaku tokei (109, 122) (similar figures).
12. From 1922 to 1932, the mean ranged from a low of 1.71 customers per night in 1930 to ahigh of 3.04 in 1923 (when some of the records were lost in the great Tokyo earthquake). The 11-

year running average was 2.10 [Keishi ch6 (1933:96)]. Other estimates confirm these figures [seeMaeda v. Yanadani, 841 H6ritsu shimbun 21, 22 (Tokyo Ct. App. Nov. 14, 1912) (70-100
customers per month); Uemura (1929:492-501) (similar figures for urban prostitutes); and Kusa-

ma (220-1) (2.54 customers per night in Tokyo, 1924)]. On the other hand, the figures for thecity of Osaka for 1913-15 ranged from 0.72 customers per night to 0.78 [see Uemura (1918:334)]. By contrast, Corbin (81) cites studies of the French licensed quarters indicating four to eightor more clients per night; see Harsin (283) (even higher figure for France).
13. In 1924, customers made 4.20 million visits to 4989 licensed prostitutes in Tokyo. At 2.54
customers per prostitute per working night in 1924, that leads to 331 working days per prostitute[Keishi ch6 (1933:96-8)].
14. During this period, mean annual wages for all factory workers were 1926, 554 yen; 1927,

632 yen; 1928, 657 yen; 1929, 666 yen; 1930, 650 yen; 1931, 605 yen; and 1932, 580 yen (seeOhsato:60, 69). Female factory workers made 30 to 40 percent of the male wage, thoughobservers argued that much of that difference disappeared when adjustments were made for age,

work experience, and tenure on the job [Rodo6sh5 (1952:14-7)1.
The Table I figures on prostitute income are based on data the government required brothel
owners to submit, and reliability is an obvious issue. Nonetheless, although the data were widelyreported in the prewar studies of the industry, I know of no abolitionists who complained that thefigures were inaccurate. To the contrary, abolitionists themselves used income figures that werequite close. See, for example, It6 (229-30). Their quarrel was not with the amount of income, butwith whether, given that income, prostitutes could live within it. See Section 4.4, infra. Thesefigures represent prostitute income before any repayment of the indenture principal.
15. Most prostitutes, of course, came from households with below-average incomes. Note thatin 1926-27, farm households had a mean monthly income of 96.2 yen, land-owning households
had income of 112.5 yen, and tenant families had an income of 79.2 yen. See Naikaku t6kei(352).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 95

Table 1. Mean Income of Female Factory Workers, Farm Households, and Licensed
Tokyo Prostitutes
A

B

C

Factory Farm Licensed

Workersa Householdsb Prostitutesc

Year (yen) (yen) (yen) C/A C/B
1926

312

1433

641

2.05

1927

320

1183

658

2.06

0.447
0.556

1928

322

1361

660

2.05

0.484

1929

320

1201

1930

289

810

554

1.73

0.461

430

1.49

0.531

1931

260

552

406

1.56

0.736

1932

245

644

388

1.58

0.602

Note:

Prostitutes

also

received

freeroaDaity wages from R6d6sh6 fujin sh
Tokyo: Rod6sh6; number of work day[Principal Economic Statistics for our
bS6mu ch6 t6kei kyoku. 1987. Nihon
18-5-a. Tokyo: S6mu ch6.
c[Keishi ch6] s6kan kanb6 bunsho ka
Agency Statistics for 1932], p. 96. T

as

a

bar

(also

maid

often

(a

job

that

involvingsomany more women looke
one: from 1920 to 1927,
licensed prostitutes in T

30,

36).

Throughits

licensingsc

overlapping hierarchicaltitutes, and unlicensed p
and could not legally mar
with better educational
theory) took extensive t
Although they sang, danc

16.

Akita

337

yen

for

a

prefecture.

for

maid

a

or

geisha,The
187

child-care

figur

for

a
worke

addition to these wages [Shakthese documents, these data shreported in Table 1-a point co
Miyagi prefectures. For eviden
Mustang.
17. See Dalby. By one study, 92 percent of the geisha had completed at least primary school.
Of the licensed prostitutes, only 42 percent had completed at least 5 of the 6 primary school years,

and 16 percent had had no schooling at all [see Fukumi (66-8; 216-7)].

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

96 The Journal of Law. Economics. & Organization, V7 N1

about 80 percent) also traded sexual services for money (Kusama:5, 20;
Fukumi:234).
Much below the highest grade geisha came the licensed and unlicensed
prostitutes, women with few pretenses about any extrasexual skills. For several reasons, customers preferred the licensed prostitutes to the unlicensed.
First, the licensed women probably invested in a reputation for providing
high-quality service. They could sell sex legally, and worked for a firm that
could market their services legally. As a result, they could safely make suchinvestments. By contrast, unlicensed prostitutes worked under the constantthreat that the police would interrupt their careers and close their employer. 18

Second, the licensed prostitutes were healthier. Licensed brothels at least
screened their recruits for contagious diseases, had weekly medical inspections, and maintained special arrangements with designated clinics. Although
the medical records are problematic, contemporary studies did consistently
show a much lower incidence of venereal disease among the licensed prostitutes than among the unlicensed.19
Finally, customers apparently considered the licensed prostitutes physicallymore attractive. First, many of the unlicensed prostitutes were women nolicensed brothel would hire (Kusama:37). Second, many unlicensed prostitutes were older. Although customers seem to have preferred women in theirlate teens and early 20s, the unlicensed sector included a larger percentage ofwomen in their late 20s and early 30s than did the licensed sector (Fukumi:59,

144).
Whatever the reasons, prices reflected this consumer preference for the
licensed prostitutes over the unlicensed. In the late 1920s, the "special"(highest) grade licensed prostitute in the Yoshiwara district of Tokyo charged
14-17 yen for a full night's assignation, and the fifth (lowest) grade licensed
prostitute charged 6 yen for a full night. By contrast, the unlicensed pros-

titutes in the Tamanoi and Kameido areas charged 3-5 yen for a night(Kusama:230-1, 242).

18. See Klein and Leffler. On the prohibition of unlicensed prostitution, see Gyosei shikk6 h6(Administrative Enforcement Act), Law No. 84 of June 1, 1900, ? 3; Naimu sh6 rei (HomeMinistry Order) No. 16 of Sept. 29, 1908, ? 1.
19. See Keishi ch6 (1933:143) and Uemura (1918:47). In 1932, these inspections of licensed
prostitutes in Tokyo resulted in findings of disease in 3.22 percent of the cases [Keishi ch6(1933:143)]. Of the positive diagnoses, 41.7 percent were of gonorrhea, 26.2 percent of chancroid, and 7.6 percent of syphilis [Keishi ch6 (1933:144)]. Inspections of unlicensed prostitutes
resulted in findings of disease in 9.7 percent of the cases [Keishi ch6 (1933:144)]. Other statistics
confirm this difference between licensed and unlicensed infection rates. In a 1927 government
study, for example, 32 percent of the unlicensed prostitutes had venereal disease, but only 2.1

percent of the licensed prostitutes did (Kusama:288, 291). A third study found an even larger
difference: 2.8 percent of the licensed prostitutes had a venereal or other communicable disease(in 1924), compared to over 40 percent of the unlicensed prostitutes (in 1925-26) (Fukumi:93,
168-9). See also Chiu shokugy6 (433-35) (similar statistics). Note that the abolitionists also
reported these low venereal disease rates for licensed prostitutes. See Kakusei (1931a) (infection
rate of 1.82 percent).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 97

3. The Regulation of Sex
3.1 The Decrees

Prostitutes used indenture arrangements that were subject to a 19th-cregulatory scheme. The American commodore Matthew Perry had

open Japanese ports in 1853, and the Western nations had soon impo

confused Japanese government various "unequal" treaties. Determ
eliminate these agreements, government leaders set out to adopt at

trappings of Western culture and law.
In 1872, their chance arrived. A Peruvian ship named the Maria Lu

into Yokohama harbor for repairs with 231 Chinese coolies hired undeyear indenture contracts.20 One jumped overboard and swam to a

English gunship. Unsure what to do, the English captain sent him to t
English consulate. The consulate in turn contacted the Japanese Foreig
istry, and the Ministry called a local judge.
The time seemed perfect to prove Japanese sophistication. The jud
his best, and declared that international trafficking in human beings

public international law. When Peru objected, the imperial Russia

intervened as arbitrator and backed the Japanese. But the ploy backfi

the middle of the proceedings, the lawyer for the Peruvian ship decla
the Japanese kept their own slaves. Japanese brothels were full, he ins
indentured women who were no freer than the coolies.

Embarrassed, the Japanese government immediately liberated all indentured prostitutes. The women could return home, and courts would entertain
no suits on their debt.21 To implement the decree, the Ministry of Justiceissued its own regulation:
Indenture contracts rob people of their rights and reduce them to horses and cattle. As one

cannot demand that horses and cattle repay their debts, neither can one demand thatprostitutes and geisha repay their indenture amounts [Shihosh6 tatsu (Justice Ministry

Circular) No. 22, ? 2, Oct. 9, 18721.

The regulation became infamous for its metaphor, but the point at least was
clear: women could leave the brothels and keep the money the brothel owners
had advanced them. Newspapers reported prostitutes loading their effects on
carts and rickshaws, and leaving the brothels in droves (Nakamura:174).
But the 1872 decree did not ban prostitution. It merely voided the indenturecontracts. By the end of the year, the city of Osaka had adopted a "roomrental" licensing scheme to make clear that prostitution was still legal, andother cities soon followed suit. The prostitute was a licensed "independent
contractor" under this system, and the brothel was a "room rental service."

20. For more elaborate accounts, as well as complete versions of the court and arbitration
decisions, see It6 (107-32); see also Stewart (Chapters 7 and 8) and Gardiner (Chapter 1).
21. Daj6kan fukoku (Cabinet Proclamation) No. 295, ? 4, Oct. 2, 1872. The principal national decrees and regulations relating to prostitution are reproduced as a legal appendix in

Yamamoto (747-67).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

98 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V7 N1

By 1875, the national government even decided to permit indentures again.
Sales of human beings were illegal, it explained, and mortgages of humans
were no better. Yet it followed those bans with a cryptic distinction-arrangements where a debtor repaid a debt through a fixed-period labor contract werelegal.22 Once again, indenture contracts were valid.
3.2 The Courts

For all this earlier confusion, by the turn of the century the courts made clear

the legal status of the indenture contracts.23 In 1896, the Supreme Court
announced part of that legal status-the personal service contract itself wasvoid. Iki Kushi had apparently agreed to work as a prostitute for several years,
but now wanted to quit. The Court let her do so. No matter what the financial
relations between the parties might be, it held, the personal service contract is
an independent agreement. It cited the 1872 decree banning indentures (butnot the 1875 decree allowing them) and held:
We see no evidence that the promisor [prostitute] intended to abandon her personal
freedom. Even had she so intended, she had no capacity to make such a binding agreement. Hence, the promisee [brothel] can enforce this contract only in ways it can enforce

any other contract-in ways that do not bind the person of the promisor. [Musashino v.

Kushi, 2-3 Daihan minroku 50, 52 (S. Ct. Mar. 11, 1896)]

Four years later, the Supreme Court explained how a disgruntled prostitutecould quit-although she could not leave the brothel unless the owner added
the brothel's seal to her petition to de-register herself as a licensed prostitute,she could force the owner to do so.24 Futa Itai had agreed to work for 30
months, but wanted to quit early. The court cited the 1872 law, and noted its
1896 opinion. It had already held such long-term service contracts unenforceable, it declared. If the woman needed the brothel owner's seal to quit, she
could compel the owner to affix it (Itai v. Yamada, 6-2 Daihan minroku at

83-84).
In refusing to enforce the personal service agreement, the Supreme Court
distinguished the accompanying loan agreement. Never mind that it voided
the personal service agreement by citing the 1872 decree-which explicitly
declared the loan unenforceable. The Court effectively transformed the indenture contract into two severable contracts: an employment contract and aloan contract. The former it held void, and the latter valid.
22. Daj6kan fukoku (Cabinet Proclamation) No. 128, Aug. 14, 1875; see Nakamura (171-8)
and Yamamoto. In 1900, the government adopted the "room rental" licensing scheme on anational scale. See Naimu sh6 rei (Home Ministry Order) No. 44, Oct. 2, 1900; Keishi chb rei(Police Office Order) No. 37, Sept. 6 1900, discussed in Yamamoto (372-80).
23. On the case law governing the indentures, see Nishimura, N6mi, Kawashima (1955),
Wagatsuma (1923, 1955), and Yonekura (1985); on the tur-of-the-century court system, seeRamseyer.

24. Itai v. Yamada, 6-2 Daihan minroku 81 (S. Ct. Feb. 23, 1900); accord Fujiivara v. Kondo,
translated and reprinted in Murphy (140) (Nagoya D.C. May 21, 1900); Ohashi v. Suzuki,
translated and reprinted in Murphy (143) (Nagoya D.C. June 11, 1900).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 99

For example, on an advance of 300 yen, Raku Uchiumi apprenticed herself
as a geisha in a hot-springs town. When the restaurant transferred her toanother restaurant for 660 yen, she apparently decided she had negotiated abad deal and tried to quit. The Court of Appeals held her five-year, five-monthservice contract void, but suggested that her loan contract was still valid[Uchiumi v. Takeda, 29 H6ritsu shimbun 12 (Hiroshima Ct. App., Oct. 30,
1900)]. The Supreme Court affirmed:
If a person contracts to live with another and perform services, the contract is notnecessarily void as a restriction on personal freedom. After all, those who agree to work
always incur some restraints. Yet a contract of the sort at bar, that restricts the promisor for

five years and five months, violates the public order and good morals. By contrast, thepromise [to repay the advance] is not invalid. It is not invalid even though the promisee
cannot enforce it directly either under law or in fact, since to do so would bodily restrict

the promisor. [Uchiumi v. Takeda, 59 H6ritsu shimbun 9, 10 (S. Ct. Oct. 10, 1901)]

The Supreme Court repeated the distinction two years later. Prostitution is

not work blessed "in the sutras," it explained, but it is work licensed bylaw.25 Accordingly, a prostitute may quit her job if she likes, but that which
she has borrowed she is bound by law to return.

Courts occasionally held to the contrary. On the one hand, some courts
enforced the personal service contract. For example, a district court refused toallow one 16 year old who had enlisted at a geisha house for six years to quit.
"For a sixteen-year-old who must learn the arts of the geisha," it wrote, "sixyears is not necessarily long." As the length and other terms were reasonable,
the house could enforce the contract [Ito v. Yoshida, 2115 H6ritsu shimbun 5,

6 (Yokohama D.C. Feb. 7, 1923)].
On the other hand, some courts held even the loan contract void. Although
they generally held the loan and service agreements severable, they did notalways do so. At root, severability was a question of fact. For example,
Yoshie Murakami entered a geisha house on a 10-year contract. Part way
through her term she quit, apparently because the house would not train her.
When the house sued her on the note, the court sided with her. Her loan andpersonal service agreements were inseparable, it explained. As the service
agreement was void, so was the loan: she could quit and keep the money.26
And when a lower court held (as it did here) that the two agreements were notseverable, the Supreme Court often deferred.27

25. Okuma v. Watanabe, 8-2 Daihan minroku 18, 21 (S. Ct. Feb. 6, 1902); see also Hama v.
Watanabe, 116 H6ritsu shimbun 10 (Tokyo Ct. App. Nov. 21, 1902).
26. Murakami v. Izumi, 1986 Horitsu shimbun 7 (Miyagi Ct. App. Apr. 22, 1922). Loan
contracts were also held void in It1 v. Ito, 21 Daihan minroku 1718, 1726 (S. Ct. Oct. 18, 1915);
Sanj6 v. Oki, 852 H6ritsu shimbun 19 (Tokyo Ct. App. Oct. 11, 1912); Yamashita v. ROka, 947
Horitsu shimbun 26, 27 (Osaka D.C., no date, journal issue of June 30, 1914); and Ono v. Ueda,
408 H6ritsu shimbun 7, 8 (Osaka D.C. Oct. 20, 1906).
27. Yamashita v. Roka, 21 Daihan minroku 905 (S. Ct. June 7, 1915); Murakami v. Izumi, 27
Daihan minroku 1774 (S. Ct. Sept. 29, 1921).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

100 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V7 N1

Nonetheless, the drafters of the time apparently knew which loan agreements courts would enforce and which agreements they would not, for mostindenture contracts seem to have contained loan agreements the courts enforced. Consider the case of Osumi Umezu.28 She had contracted to work as alicensed prostitute and received a 650 yen advance. Before repaying theadvance, she decided to leave. The Court let her go. Long-term personal
service contracts were void, and if Osumi wanted to quit, she could quit. Herloan, though, remained valid. If she quit, she and her guarantors still owed theamount she had borrowed.

Similarly, Ham Kiyomizu had agreed to work as a geisha and received
2300 yen in advance, but had died part way through the contract. When thehouse sued her father as guarantor, the court held for the house: "WhenKiyomizu Haru dies, the debt is no longer repayable through her earnings.
Nonetheless, the contractual liability continues." The agreements were sever-able, and even if she were gone, the note and guarantee were still valid[Kiyomizu v. Takeuchi, 3336 H6ritsu shimbun 10, 10 (S. Ct. Oct. 23, 1931)].
4. The Indenture Contracts

In large part, modem scholars misunderstand prewar Japanese prostitution
because they mischaracterize the prewar indenture contracts.29 Most scholadescribe the contracts as debt peonage: Under the indenture agreement

prostitutes worked at a brothel until they repaid their loans. Brothel owner

and recruiters enticed them into the industry by claiming that repaymen
would be fast. In fact, they lied. Once a woman enlisted, they charged her
usurious rates on the loan and exorbitant prices for necessities. Through thescam, they kept her perpetually in debt, and trapped at the brothel for as lo
as she would sell. Effectively, as one historian put it, "the licensed prostitut
ended her life as a sexual slave."30

No doubt some brothel owners did manipulate contractual terms, and no
doubt some did tie prostitutes to the brothel for as long as customers would
buy their services.31 Yet the industry-wide records instead show that case

28. Umezu v. Abe, 2884 H6ritsu shimbun 5, 6 (S. Ct. May 12, 1928). Other cases reaching t
same result include Shibuya v. Yokoyama, 4355 H6ritsu shimbun 7, 9 (S. Ct. Nov. 22, 1938
Haneda v. Matsumoto, 2272 H6ritsu shimbun 19 (S. Ct. Apr. 1, 1924); Mori v. Oshita, 18
H6ritsu shimbun 11 (S. Ct. Oct. 30, 1920); Watamaki v. Haneda, 10 Daihan minroku 1687, 16(S. Ct. Dec. 26, 1904); and Maeda v. Yanadani, 841 H6ritsu shimbun 21 (Tokyo Ct. App. Nov
14, 1912).
29. For examples of actual contracts, see It6 (221-8), Sait6, Kusama (170-204); and Ch

shokugy6 (392-400).
30. See Murakami (50); similar accounts appear in, for example, Yamamoto (391-2

Yonekura (59:41), and Yoshimi (31-36). To "prove" this account, abolitionists relied on surveof those prostitutes who quite in violation of their contracts-not a random sample. See, fo

example, It6 (301-7).

31. For examples of contracts where the women did work until they had fully repaid the loan

see It6 (227) and Kusama (170-78). See also, for example, Okuma v. Watanabe, 8-2 Daihminroku 18, 20 (S. Ct. Feb. 6, 1902); Ito (230-1) (earnings and expenses of one insolve

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 101

where the brothel owner kept the prostitute tied to the brothel were theexception. Consider first the geisha indentures, then the licensed prostitutes.
4.1 Geisha Indentures

Indentured geisha generally contracted to work only for a set number ofyears-the mode being three.32 Because they were often young when they
apprenticed themselves [a quarter were under 18 (Fukumi:208-9)], their pa
ents routinely demanded their net expected earnings at the outset-a meanamount in 1925 of 959 yen.33 In exchange, the house trained the women tsing and dance, paid their expenses, gave them a small allowance (generally
10 to 20 percent of their earnings), but kept all other revenues they generate
As a result, the economics of geisha indentures were simple: if a woman
raised less than her advance payment plus room and board and any pocket

money over the indenture term, the house bore the loss; if she raised more, thhouse kept the extra. In effect, the contract ensured (a) that no one (includin

the geisha house) would defraud the woman of her earnings, (b) that s

would receive food and shelter, however modest, and (c) that she would befree to leave when the initial term expired.34 To parents sending their childr
to the city alone for several years, such security mattered.
4.2 Prostitute Indentures

Because licensed prostitutes were older (by law they were at least 18 [Naimu
sh6 rei (Home Ministry Order) No. 44 of Oct 2. 1900, ? 1], they negotiateddifferent contracts. They agreed to work for a maximum number of years, but
kept track of their earnings and retained the right to quit early if they weresuccessful. In the mid-1920s, the maximum time for which they agreed towork was usually six years.35 In exchange, they too received an advance of

prostitute over a four-month period); Ito (301-7) (abolitionist data finding that various samples of

prostitutes had an increase in debt); and Chiu shokugy6 (428-32) (high expenses).
32. Of 6603 indentured geisha studied in 1925, 1.5 percent had one-year contracts, 4.6 percent
had two-year contracts, 29.0 percent had three-year contracts, 28.5 percent had four-year contracts, 13.9 percent had five-year contracts, and 22.5 percent had contracts of six years or more.

See Chii shokugy6 (414) and Kusama (214-5).
33. See Chiu6 shokugy6 (412-3) (note, too, that a second study found a mean of 955 yen); seealso Kusama (205-6). The mode was 1000 to 1200 yen [Kusama (215)1.
34. This contract was known as "marukakae," and was the contract most common among
geisha who sold sex (Kusama:5). Approximately 60 percent of all Tokyo geisha used this type ofcontract (Kusama:5). For descriptions of these and other types of geisha contracts, see Fukumi(237-43), Higuchi (45-50), and Kusama (2-5).
Occasionally, a girl was "adopted" into the geisha house in exchange for a payment to theparents. Courts routinely declared such adoptions void. See, for example, Takayama v. Taka-yama, 907 Horitsu shimbun 24 (Tokyo Ct. App. Oct. 9, 1913); Kato v. Kato, 514 H6ritsu
shimbun 11 (Tokyo Ct. App. July 7, 1908); and Ito v. Ito, 802 H6ritsu shimbun 17 (Tokyo D.C.
July 5, 1912).

35. See Chfu shokugy6 (414-15) (79.4 percent of licensed prostitutes had six-year indentures) and Kusama (211) (73.0 percent of licensed prostitutes had six-year indentures). This wasapparently the longest contract allowed them. See It6 (220).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

102 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V7 N1

their net earnings-with the women who signed the longer-term contracts
receiving the larger advances (Kusama:208-9). In the mid-1920s, the mean

advance was 1194 yen.36
In calculating the prostitute's pay, the brothel first deducted its own fee.
Generally, that fee varied from 67 to 75 percent of the prostitute's grossbillings. The prostitute received the remaining 25 to 33 percent of the gross.
She usually applied 60 percent of this amount toward the principal on herloan, and kept the rest for current expenses. In most cases, she did not
explicitly pay interest, for most contracts did not contain an interest charge.
Instead, the brothels apparently applied an implicit interest rate to her advancein calculating her share of the gross earnings.
Under the standard contract for licensed prostitutes, the prostitute could
fulfill her part of the bargain either by repaying the principal or by serving the

maximum contractual term. If (through the 60 percent she applied toward theloan) she repaid the loan principal before the end of her term, she could quit.
If at the end of her term she had not yet repaid the amount, she could still quit.

In the meantime, most brothels did not charge her additional room andboard.37

4.3 Contractual Enforcement

Such was not just the way the parties usually drafted the contracts, it was also
the way they usually implemented them. With assumptions drawn from modern illegal sex markets, scholars generally assume that brothel owners in legalsex markets use violence and coercion and ignore contractual niceties. And

some abolitionists did recount anecdotes of hooligans and corrupt owners.38
Yet the industry-wide data instead suggest that the owners regularly kept theirpart of the bargains.

Consider first some simple finances.39 In 1925, consumers made 3.74
million visits to the 5159 licensed prostitutes in Tokyo. Aside from charges

36. See Fukumi (70). The mode was 1000-1200 yen. See also ChFi shokugy6 (412-5) (citing
two studies: one with a mean of 1222 yen for 1925, one with a mean of 1018 yen) and Kusama(206) (same). Where it had been customary to deduct 200-300 yen for clothing, bedding,miscellaneous household effects, and the placement fee, the industry eventually shifted to asystem in which the parent or prostitute received the entire indenture amount, but then borrowed

an additional amount to cover those expenses (Kusama:213). On typical charges for these materials, see Kusama (260-3). The mean charge by placement agencies in 1926 was 8.5 percent of
the advance [Chiu shokugy6 (400)].

37. See Keishi ch6 (1933:96) (aggregate earnings data), Fukumi (97-9, 220) (contractual
terms), Okubo (246-7) (same), Kusama (283) (same), It6 (229) (allocation of earnings), andFukumi (115-6) (expenses).
38. See, for example, Murphy; see also de Becker (186-8) (fraudulent bookkeeping). Note,however, that by 1928 even some abolitionists were writing that it had become quite simple forlicensed prostitutes to quit with both unserved time and unpaid debts. They noted the risk ofhooligans only in the case of unlicensed brothels. See Ishijima.

39. All figures are from Keishi ch6 (1933:96, 98); see Kusama (227-8) (same).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 103

for food and drink, they spent 11.1 million yen. Of this amount, the prostitutes kept 31 percent, or 3.4 million yen-655 yen per prostitute. Under theusual arrangement, each prostitute would have paid 60 percent of this amount(393 yen) toward the loan principal and kept the rest (262 yen) for personal
expenses. With an initial loan of 1194 yen, the average prostitute would haverepaid her principal in 3.03 years. Nor should she have found it hard to live on
262 yen-21.8 yen per month. After all, she received room and board free.

Young industrial workers earned modal monthly wages of less than 2 yen if
they also received room and board, and 15-16 yen per month if not;40 adultfactory workers (generally not receiving room and board) received a mean
monthly wage in 1925 of 47 yen.41
Second, consider the incidence of after-acquired debt among prostitutes.42
Moder scholars routinely claim that brothel owners kept their prostitutes tied
to the brothel by increasing their debts. And as of 1925, 92 percent of the5000-odd Tokyo licensed prostitutes did have some outstanding debt to thebrothel besides their initial advance. Yet 37 percent had less than 200 yen
outstanding, and an additional 19 percent had only 200-400 yen outstanding.
Recall that the prostitutes had initially borrowed about 1200 yen. Only half ofthem had outstanding additional debts of at least one-third that amount, andonly 5 percent had outstanding debts of at least an additional 1000.
More to the point, the longer a prostitute had worked at a brothel, thesmaller the chance she had after-acquired debt outstanding. Consider again
the 5000-odd Tokyo licensed prostitutes. Among those in the first year of theircontract, 1484 had some after-acquired debt. Among those in their third year,
only 703 had such debt, and among those in their sixth, only 84. In otherwords, once they had adjusted to their new job, they learned to save andrepaid their debts. Most did borrow money beyond their original advance, butthey borrowed it early in their career and repaid it fast.

Third, consider Table 2, the age distribution of licensed prostitutes inTokyo. By law, a woman could not become a licensed prostitute until age 18,
and most (though not all) prostitutes began work at a brothel between the ages

40. See Shakai (1936:53). The figures are for 12-18 year olds, and date from 1935. For
purposes of comparison, note that the average daily factory wage (adults, both sexes) in 1925 was

1.75 yen, and in 1935 was 1.88 yen. See Ohsato (68).

41. See Ohsato (60,68) (27 days at 1.746 yen per day; 1925). In 1926-27, working class
Japanese families spent 40 percent of their expenses on food and 16 percent on housing. See
Naikaku t6kei (353); see also Seiji keizai (7) (similar data for mid-1930s). In 1926, men earned
2.35 yen per day at factory work, while women earned 0.96 yen per day. See R6d6sh6 (1952:14);
see also Naikaku t6kei (130) (2.10 yen for men, 0.88 yen for women; 1924).

42. The data are from Fukumi (122-3); see also Cho6 shokugy6 (433) and Kusama (280).
Much the same is true of the geisha. According to one 1926 study of 2554 Tokyo geisha withafter-acquired debt, 63 percent had borrowed less than 200 yen, and an additional 22 percent hadborrowed 200-400 yen. Only 7 percent had borrowed at least an additional 1000 yen. See
Kusama (258-9).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

104 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V7 N1

Table 2. Licensed Prostitutes in Tokyo, 1925

Age Number Age Number
18-20

21

1104

737

26

27

330

254

22

632

28-29

306

23

631

30-34

185

24

515

25

Source:Tokyo:

of

35-39

423

29

40-

6

Fukumi,Taka
Hakubunkan.

18

and

21.4

steadily.
Werebeyond
their
i

in

2

each

age

shows

br

a

ste

women
in
192
licensed
prost
1925),
howevecohort
over
t

Other
data
m
licensed
prost

year,

16,200percent)

were
seventh
ye

or

mean

number
was
less
than
entry
and
exi

43.

See

Naimu

Fukumi,
During

in

the

the

one

10-mo

Shin-Yoshpercent

were

19,

percent

were

Kusama:122-3].

(very

223;

sh

sour

roughly)

age

19,

24,

U

es

380

44.
Other
sourcetransitionaljobw
prostitutioninotheexperience
o
women
in
prewa
45.
See
Ito
(208-1
first

year,

percent

36

were

perc

in

(Kusama:281).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termstIndentured Prostitution in Japan 105

prostitutes and 18,300 women deregistered. Of the work force of some
50,000, about one-third turned over each year.46
The basic point, therefore, is that the brothel owners did not, on any wide
scale, manipulate the indenture contracts to keep prostitutes tied to the brothelsignificantly beyond the term of the initial contract.47 Women enlisted for alimited number of years with the understanding that they could quit early ifthey worked hard. Many did. Most of the rest apparently quit when their term

expired.48
To be sure, because prostitutes incurred a fixed cost (a reputational loss) inentering the industry, one might have expected many to reenlist. Once they
had worked as a prostitute, their fixed cost was sunk. If their earnings stayed

constant, many should have found it profitable to stay in the industry. Pros-

titute revenues, however, fell with age (Kusama:207). As a result, apparently
only those few who earned the most money and found the job least offensive
considered it worthwhile to reenlist. Most of the rest seem to have considered
the work not worth the new lower wages-for most seem to have quit.
4.4 Control and Credit

In addition to debt peonage, modem scholars raise two hypotheses to explain
why brothel owners and prostitutes used multiyear indenture contracts: thatthe contracts enabled the brothels to control the prostitutes, and that they
enabled peasants without credit to borrow. Nonetheless, although the contracts did provide credit and often did constrain the prostitutes, neither thesis
very adequately explains why licensed brothels and prostitutes used them sopervasively.
4.4.1 Control. If brothel owners used the indenture contracts to control prostitutes (e.g., Kawashima, 1951), they did not choose a very straightforward

way of doing so-or even the most effective. Suppose A deposits a large sum

46. See Yamamoto (388). It6 (211-3) uses data primarily from 1923, but the data is lessreliable because of the way he haphazardly includes some data from other years. He finds that
13,500 registered in one year and 11,000 deregistered. Uemura (62, 184-7) finds that, in Osaka,

one-third of the new registrations were not genuinely new recruits but rather, inter alia,
prostitutes moving from one city to another or reenlisting with a new indenture contract. If,

following Uemura, one assumes that /3 of Yamamoto's 18,800 registrants were not genuinely
new registrants, then the annual industry turnover rate would be about 'A. In general, only about 1

percent of the licensed prostitutes quit their jobs with outstanding debt (It6:213-4).
47. We should not be entirely surprised that the brothels appear to have exploited prostitutes
less than generally alleged. After all, brothels were repeat players in a competitive market. They
could more cheaply recruit if they developed a reputation for treating their prostitutes relatively
fairly. Some even worked to reassure their recruits by using standard form contracts approved by

the local police station. See Shibatani v. Yokoyama, 4355 H6ritsu shimbun 7, 8 (S. Ct. Nov. 22,
1938).
48. In a study of licensed Osaka prostitutes, Uemura (62, 184-7) found that less than 'A of the
18,800 annual registrants were reenlistments-but how much less than 'A is unclear from hisdata. Other studies suggest that a very few licensed prostitutes did work as unlicensed prostitutes
when they had fulfilled their contractual terms (Fukumi:147).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

106 The Journal of Law. Economics, & Organization, V7 N1

of money with B. B can now constrain A, for B has A's cash. By paying thebond, A makes itself vulnerable to B; A does not thereby gain control over B.
Consider banks. Banks concurrently lend money to borrowers and exercise
control over the borrower's business. They bargain for the control, though,because they have lent the money and become vulnerable. They do not lend
the money because they thereby gain control. Likewise, when a brothel paid aprostitute several years' wages in advance, it put itself in a position where she
could force it to keep its part of the bargain-not vice versa.49
More basically, if the brothel owners had wanted to control the prostitutes,
they had other far more straightforward and powerful ways of doing so. Most
obviously, they could have forced the prostitute to deposit money (e.g., part ofher earnings) with the brothel, rather than do what they did-deposit theirown money with the prostitute. In demanding that the prostitute post such abond, they would have had plenty of precedents. For example, some textile
factories of the period routinely withheld a portion of their employees' wages.
If and when the employee fulfilled the terms of her contract, she received thewithheld amount. If she reneged, she forfeited it (Murakami:135). Similarly,

American indentured servants often received a large lump-sum payment
called "freedom dues" at the end of their indenture term (Engerman,
1986:268-9). By paying the servant those dues only if he or she satisfactorily
completed the contract, the employer gave the servant an incentive not to quitor shirk. Were Japanese brothel owners determined to control their employees, they could easily have used such a system. In fact, they did not.
4.4.2 Credit. The notion that prostitutes would use the indenture contracts toobtain credit makes more sense. Because of the international depression, thebad harvests, and the collapse of the textile market, perhaps prewar Japanesepeasants had little to eat. With no assets to transfer, they had nothing to sell.
With no assets to pledge, they had no way to borrow. Unable to raise cash
otherwise, women sold themselves and parents sold their daughters. In otherwords, perhaps peasants used the indenture contracts to overcome failures in
the credit market. On its face, the hypothesis works. Moreover, if true, itwould explain the contracts in a way consistent with indenture contracts
outside of prostitution.50

Although the brothels no doubt did give credit to many peasants who
49. Some contracts provided penalties that applied when the prostitute quit early, but courts
often refused to enforce the penalty clauses. In some cases, the courts even considered the clauses

reason to invalidate the entire debt contract. See, for example, Murakami v. Izumi, 28 Saihan

minroku 1774, 1780-81 (S. Ct. Sept. 29, 1921).
50. See, for example, Cloud and Galenson, Emer, Feeny, Galenson, Grubb (1985, 1988), andPopkin (54). Note, however, that the need for credible commitments (Section 4.5, infra) could
also help explain the use of indenture contracts in international migration. The worker incurred ahigh fixed cost in relocating to a new country, and the recruiter had much better information (andan incentive to lie) about the opportunities available there. As a result, the recruiter could havebeen paying the worker a large part of his or her wages in advance in order to make the promises
about the benefits of emigration credible.

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 107

wanted it,51 failures in the credit market cannot explain why brothels andprostitutes used multiyear indenture contracts so pervasively. First, as noted
above, courts refused to enforce long-term personal service agreements. As aresult, the indenture contract could not substitute for other ways (e.g., collateral, guarantees) of enforcing loans, and thus could not have alleviated any
basic credit-market failure. Suppose a brothel recruited a woman through a
1200 yen indenture, and two months later found that she wanted to quit.
Although it could sue on the note, it could not legally force her to work.
Because of the judicial refusal to enforce personal service contracts, in otherwords, prostitute indentures were little safer than unsecured loans. Consequently, brothel owners tried to recruit only women from families with assets
they could seize (Murphy:119, 132); families without the assets necessary toobtain a loan from other sources had little reason to expect that their daughters

could find work as indentured prostitutes. When (in 1896) the Supreme Court
voided the personal service contracts, it apparently prevented the very poorest
women from using the indentures to raise cash.52

Second, were peasants demanding the long-term contracts because theyneeded large loans, they would have demanded them of other employers
besides the licensed brothels and geisha houses. Notwithstanding this, themultiyear indentures were rare outside of the brothels and houses. Take, forexample, some of the largest employers of women in prewar Japan-thetextile companies. Textile firms employed a total of 751,000 women in 1925,
and each factory employed a mean of 69 workers (Fukuoka:55). By contrast,
the modal brothel had only six prostitutes on staff, and the modal geisha house
had only one geisha.53 As a result, a textile firm should have been able to

51. When registering as prostitutes at the local police office, women were required to give
their reasons for doing so, and almost all wrote poverty. The point is meaningless, however, for ifthey wrote anything else, the police refused their application to register. See Chuio shokugy6(390) and Kusama (32-3). Nonetheless, most prostitutes apparently did come from lower-classbackgrounds (see Kusama:47-75).
52. To be sure, abolitionist writers occasionally claimed that hooligans and corrupt police usedviolence to prevent women from quitting in violation of their contracts. See, for example, It6(308). Yet note several points. First, the evidence suggests that brothel owners did not manipulate
the indenture contracts to keep women at the brothel for the full six years, but instead let many

women quit after two or three years. At least when women had repaid their initial debt, thebrothel owners seem to have followed the letter of the law. See Section 4.3, supra. Second, if
brothel owners could successfully enforce indenture contracts through these illegal means, thenunlicensed brothels (with dubious access to the judicial system) should have been offering them aswell. However, in fact, unlicensed brothels often did not offer indentures, and generally offeredmuch smaller amounts than the licensed brothels when they offered any at all. See Chuo

shokugy6 (413), Keishi ch6 (1935:509-10), and Kusama (216-7). Third, other abolitionists
reported that by the 1920s it had become quite simple for licensed prostitutes to quit in violationof their contractual terms. These abolitionists noted the risk of hooligans only in the case of
unlicensed (and hence illegal) prostitutes. See Ishijima.
53. See Fukumi (50-1, 203-4) (Tokyo data). Four Tokyo brothels had one prostitute; the twolargest had 21 each; 66 percent of the brothels had from four to eight prostitutes (Fukumi:50- 1).

Only two Tokyo geisha houses had more than 10 geisha (Fukumi:203-4).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

108 The Journal of Law, Economics. & Organization, V7 N1

diversify credit risks more effectively than a brothel or geisha house. In turn,peasants interested in exchanging several years' worth of labor for credit
should have found textile factories more receptive than brothels. Yet such was
not the case. Instead, to the extent that the factories offered indentures, they
apparently offered only relatively short contractual terms and relatively small
advances-enough money to pay the workers' travel and readjustment costs,
perhaps, but probably not much more.
True, a woman indentured at a brothel should have received a larger advance than a woman indentured elsewhere for the same length of time, if only
because sex paid better than most other manual labor. Yet that fact alone does
not explain why the multiyear indentures were so common at the brothels andso rare elsewhere. High wages in the sex industry did not induce most poor

women to become prostitutes; neither, therefore, should large loans haveinduced most credit-short women to become prostitutes. In other words, if
credit had been driving the multiyear indentures, a broad range of employers
should have offered them. Some credit-short women would then have chosen

prostitution because of the large advances. But many others would have opted
for smaller loans from employers with less demeaning jobs, just as most poor
women avoided prostitution despite the high wages. Notwithstanding all this,multiyear indenture contracts were nearly universal among licensed prostitutes and common among geisha; among factory workers, they were not.54
4.5 Credible Commitments

Apparently, neither the hypothesis that brothels wanted power over prostitutes

nor the hypothesis that many peasants needed credit satisfactorily explains
why brothels apd prostitutes so often used multiyear indenture contracts.
Consider instead, therefore, the possibility that they negotiated the contracts
for reasons relating to (a) the need for "credible commitments" [Williamson(1983, 1985:Chapters 7 and 8); see Lee and Png], and (b) the efficient allocation of legal costs.
4.5.1 The Contracting Problem. A woman entering the sexual services industry faced several problems relevant here. First, in entering the industry, she

54. Hane (175), Nishimura (1026), and Sievers (63) suggest that some factories did use someindentures. Yet other empirical data suggest that multiyear indenture contracts were uncommon

among industrial workers. First, of 1077 12- to 18-year-old workers (in a cross section ofindustries) surveyed in 1935, only 59 were aware of any indentures, and only one (the highest)

had an indenture of 400-500 yen. The male indentures were all for under 100 yen. See Shakai(1936:45, 49), Fukuoka (40), and Suehiro (4). Second, Tamura (38-9) reports that of all workers
working under indenture contracts in 1951-52, 63 percent went into pure prostitution; 8.1 percent

became maids at hotels, brothels, bars, and geisha houses; 8 percent went into agriculture; 3.8

percent became factory workers; 3 percent became geisha; 3 percent became waitresses or bar
maids; and 2.9 percent became child-care workers. See also Kanzaki (99) and R6dosh6 (1953:74,
Appendix 74). Third, one early-1930s survey of indentured women found that the mean indenture
for licensed prostitutes was 900 yen; for geisha, 800 yen; for bar maids, 400 yen; and for factory
workers, 130 yen [Shakai (1935:159)]. Fourth, Fruin carefully documents a steady shortening incontracts for indentured labor for several denturies up to the Meiji period.

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 109

brought substantial stigma upon herself and her family. Because of this stigma, she would take the job only if she could expect to earn a total amount thatat least compensated her for this "reputational loss." To be sure, one can
exaggerate the loss. All else equal, the women for whom the loss was least
severe should have chosen the job most often. And one study (of 300 licensed
prostitutes who quit in violation of their employment contracts-not a random
sample) did suggest that ex-prostitutes were not necessarily social outcasts: 29
percent returned to their parents, 12 percent took factor jobs, 5 percent foundoffice work, and most of the rest took other "respectable" jobs like nurses' aid
positions.55 Nonetheless, most contemporaneous sources suggest instead thatprostitutes skirted the margins of respectability if licensed geisha, and aban-

doned all claims to it if not. Quoting a Japanese source, one astute (andotherwise relatively nonmoralistic) turn-of-the-century Tokyo observer captures what seems the general consensus: an ex-prostitute "has violated thevirtue of chastity, wasted the flower of her youth in vicious living, and as she

is unaccustomed to attend to the proper duties of women her future prospects
are anything but cheerful and reassuring" (de Becker:248).
Second, the would-be prostitute had little reliable information about how

much money she would earn in the industry. Given that the stigma attachedwhen she entered the industry, moreover, she had no cheap way to discover
her market "price." And given the uncertainty of the aging process, even if
she knew her current price she had no way of knowing how rapidly it would

decline over time.

Third, the would-be prostitute could not diversify her human capital. She
was her own most valuable asset, yet that asset was not one whose risks she
could easily diversify.
The brothel owners faced very different problems. Theirs were not problems of information or diversification. First, they had much better information

about the sexual services market than a recruit. In most cases, therefore, they
could estimate what a recruit would earn more accurately than the recruit

herself could. Second, they could diversify their investments. When they
invested in a prostitute's human capital (by buying her services for several
years), they could eliminate much of the associated risk by simultaneously
contracting with several prostitutes.
Instead, the brothel owners' problem was one of credibility. Although they
hoped to recruit young women by promising them money, they could noteasily make their promises about future earnings credible. For although they
had better information about the potential recruit's earning capacity than the
recruit herself, they also had an incentive to lie. They were asking her to suffera certain and significant reputational loss, in exchange for income that wasrisky at best and about which they had considerable incentive to exaggerate.
To be sure, her investments were not specific to the brothel-but neither does

55. It6 (494-5). In his fine study, Garon (19) discusses evidence finding that large numbers(42 percent) of ex-prostitutes returned home to their parents and that large numbers (M) eventuallymarried.

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

110 The Journal of Lav, Economics, & Organization, V7 N1

the point matter: once a brothel owner had enticed a recruit into the industry
by exaggerating her market earning potential, she could not improve her
position by switching to another brothel.

4.5.2 Piece-Rate and Flat-Rate Contracts. These problems of informational
asymmetry and promissory credibility foreclosed a piece-rate (productivitybased) contract between the brothel owner and the recruit. The contract would

have solved one basic problem in the industry: how to motivate a recruit towork hard at what was a fundamentally squalid job. Unfortunately, it did notgive the recruit the assurance she needed. She needed to know-before sheentered the industry-that her earning as a prostitute would exceed her earnings elsewhere by an amount large enough to offset the stigma and squalor
involved. That, however, was something the piece-rate contract could notassure her.

A flat daily wage did little to improve matters. Most obviously, it gave theprostitute an incentive to work less hard. But it also gave the brothel owner an
incentive to fire workers who generated revenues less than their contractual

daily wage, and to discharge even relatively productive workers during low
demand periods (or to threaten to discharge them unless they agreed to a wagecut). Given that a prostitute could expect the revenue she generated to decline

over time (Kusama:207), the problem was particularly acute-for she had toworry that the owner might fire her before she had had a chance to recoup her

initial reputational loss.

4.5.3 Fixed-Term Contracts and Sign-on Bonuses. Because prostitutes incurred a high initial fixed cost, brothel owners could recruit them effectively
only if they credibly promised to employ them long enough for the prostitutes

to recoup a significant part of that fixed cost. The owners could recruit
effectively, in short, only if they promised the prostitutes not just a minimum

daily wage, but also a minimum total wage. To do so, they had to promise theprostitutes a minimum employment term besides a minimum wage. Even withsuch a guaranteed term, though, the problem of credibility remained. To
promise credibly that the owner would employ a recruit for a given period oftime, the owner had to be able to promise that he or she would keep the recruit

employed even if her revenues fell permanently below her contractual wage.

Such a promise is not one most owners would have found easy to makecredible.

A sign-on bonus could have alleviated some of the problems of credibility.
The brothel owner might have paid the prostitute enough money up-front tooffset a substantial portion of her reputational loss. That ploy, however, would
now have given the prostitute an incentive to pocket the money, quit, andmove to a rival brothel.56 What the brothel and prostitute needed was a

56. Note, however, that the geisha houses did organize a central clearinghouse through which
they enforced on each other an agreement not to hire any geisha who reneged on her contract withanother geisha house (Chuo shokugy6:392).

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 111

contract that credibly promised a minimum total compensation package-but
did so without simultaneously giving the prostitute an incentive to quit.

4.5.4 Indenture Contracts. The indenture contract (described in Section 4.2)
mitigated many of these problems. Under the contract, the owners gave theprostitute a minimum daily wage: the indenture advance plus room and board,
divided by the maximum indenture term. They gave her an incentive to work
hard: the chance to quit early. They gave her a minimum total compensation
package: the indenture amount plus room and board. And they gave her adisincentive to quit or move elsewhere: the requirement that she repay thatpart of her advance she had not yet earned.

That much the parties could have accomplished with an unindentured
contract that combined a minimum daily wage with a performance-based
bonus and a minimum contractual term. Yet the indenture contract differedfrom such a hypothetical contract in one critical way: under the indenturecontract, the brothel owners paid the prostitute a substantial portion of her
earnings up front, and thereby allocated the burden of invoking the legal
system in a dispute to themselves.
And in agreeing to bear the cost of invoking the legal system in a dispute,the brothel owners helped make their promises credible. For credibility canderive from the assignment of legal costs. If a dispute arose under the hypothetical minimum-wage-bonus-minimum-term contract (e.g., if the brothel
owner reneged on the promised wage), the prostitute had to invoke the legal
apparatus to recover her promised wages-for the brothel owner had not yet

paid her the total promised compensation. By contrast, if a dispute arose
under the indenture contract, the brothel owner had to invoke the legal system-for the owner had already paid her three- to six-years' wages. Effective-

ly, the brothel owner's willingness to advance the prostitute her promised
earnings made the promise to pay those earnings credible. Were the legal
system free, such a loan would not add credibility. But legal systems are notfree. In Japan as here, possession is nine parts of the law. Because mostpeasants would have found the legal system foreign and intimidating, the moststraightforward way to make them a credible promise was to advance them
cash on the barrel.

Note that the indenture contract not only helped make the brothel owner's
promises credible, it also allocated the cost of invoking the legal system efficiently. Recall that parties generally bargain in the shadow of the law.57 As aresult, if a dispute occurred, either the owner or the prostitute would haveinvoked (or threatened to invoke) the legal system. Hence, the efficient deal was

the one that placed that burden on the party able to invoke the system most

57. See Mnookin and Korhauser, and Ramseyer and Nakazato (1989). Note that prostitutes
would have received information about their legal rights not just by word of mouth from otherprostitutes, but also from the abolitionists. During most of the period from 1890 to 1940, a wide
variety of abolitionists worked hard to encourage prostitutes to quit. One detailed description of
the process appears in Murphy; accounts also regularly appeared in such abolitionist journals as

Kakusei.

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

112 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V7 N1cheaply.58 As a repeat player, most brothel owners could afford to invest in theinformation and legal talent necessary to manipulate the judicial apparatus. By
contrast, most prostitutes and their parents had little education or sophistication, and as one-shot players were less likely to find it cost-effective to learn
how to use the legal system. Given these cost asymmetries, the parties did what

Coase predicts: they placed the transactions costs (here, the cost of marshaling
the legal system) on the party that could bear them most cheaply. Under thecontracts, if the prostitute tried to renege, the owner had to recover his or her
money. If the owner tried to renege, the prostitute already had the cash.59
5. CodaBy 1957, this long-standing legal market for commercial sex wa
Douglas MacArthur and his advisers had begun the change in 194

they ordered the Japanese government to cancel the prewar licensin
tem.60 Ten years later, the Japanese Supreme Court continued the pby declaring the loans accompanying indentured prostitution contra[Fujita v. Okazaki, 9 Saihan minshui 1616 (S. Ct. Oct. 7, 1955)]. Since 1
indentured prostitutes had legally been able to abandon their job whthey pleased. Under the prewar cases, however, they and their guara
were liable on the debt if they did. Now, indentured prostitutes could
their debts as well. The final blow followed quickly. Within a year oSupreme Court decision, the abolitionists convinced the Japanese Diet
prostitution [Baishun b6shi h6 (Prostitution Prevention Act), Law No
May 24, 1956]. Prostitution still continues, but only in illegal form.
6. Conclusion

In 12th-century Toulouse, the public brothels split their profits with theuniversity (Shadwell). Not so in Japan. Japanese brothels never tried toacademic support, and never had it. Instead, academics have consiste

criticized the brothels for "enslaving" peasant women. Indenture contra
were an important part of the tales they told: poor and unsophisticated,
ants unwittingly accepted indenture contracts that the brothel owners use
reduce prostitutes to sexual slaves.
These tales cheat the prostitutes of their due-for they drastically und

58. Even if litigation rarely ensued, imposing the litigation burden on the party able to in

the courts most cheaply was still efficient, because it lessened the possible scope of ex

opportunism in the negotiations over a dispute.
59. I located only three suits by prostitutes (all geisha) against their houses for nonpaymen

earnings. I found seven cases in which parents or guarantors complained about the hous
brothel's) seizure of their assets (based on claims that the prostitute had quit in violation ocontract), and another 12 cases where a house or brothel sued the prostitute or her pareguardians for nonpayment on her debt. Reported cases are not, of course, a represent
sample.
60. See Oppler (158). Naimu sh6 rei (Home Ministry Order) No. 3, Feb. 2, 1946; Naimu sh6
keiho kyokuch6 k6anhatsu k6 (Home Ministry Police Office Chief Public Safety Promulgation)

No. 9, Feb. 2, 1946; Choku rei (Imperial Order) No. 9, Jan. 15, 1947.

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 113

state the resourcefulness that they could show, even in the direst situations.
Although prostitution was harsh work, most brothel owners were not able tomanipulate indenture contracts to keep prostitutes at work indefinitely, andmost prostitutes did not become slaves. Instead, licensed prostitutes generally
enlisted under six-year indenture contracts. They earned (what were for them)very high incomes. Many repaid their debts in three or four years and quit
early. Most of the rest quit when their contracts expired.
Within this world, the indentures helped make the employment market
itself possible-for despite the promises of high incomes, a woman entering
the industry for the first time could never be sure. She knew she and herfamily suffered a loss in social status if she took the job, knew some brothel
owners had an incentive to lie about the money she would make, and knew
most owners would be able to invoke the courts more easily than she. Precisely because she could never be sure of the money, she found the indenturecontract advantageous. Through the contract, the brothel owners could promise her total earnings large enough to offset a substantial part of her lost status,
could make that promise credible by paying her in advance, and could shoulder the costs of invoking the legal system themselves.

The point is not that licensed prostitution and indentured servitude werenecessarily "good for Japan"; neither is the point that, overall, peasant women benefited from the availability of a legal market in prostitution. As noted

earlier, both issues are beyond the scope of this essay. Instead, the point ismore limited: Given the substantial stigma women incurred in entering theindustry, many women hesitated to take jobs at brothels (and many parents
hesitated to send their daughters to brothels) without some assurance that theywould earn much higher wages than they could earn elsewhere. The indentured contracts offered that assurance.

References
Chiuo shokugy6 sh6kai jimukyoku. 1926. Geishogi shakufu shokaigy6 ni kansuru ch6sa [AnInvestigation into the Placement Industry for Geisha, Prostitutes, and Bar Maids]. Reprinted
in Ken'ichi Taniguchi, ed. 1971. Kindai minsha no kiroku [A Report of the Modern Populace],Vol. 3. Tokyo: Shin jinbutsu 6rai sha.
Cloud, Patricia, and David W. Galenson. 1987. "Chinese Immigration and Contract Labor in the

Late Nineteenth Century," 24 Explorations in Economic History 22-42.

Coase, R. H. 1960. "The Problem of Social Cost," 3 Journal of Law and Economics 1-44.
Corbin, Alain. 1990. Women for Hire: Prostitutes and Sexuality in France after 1850.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Dalby, Liza Crihfield. 1985. Geisha. New York: Random House.
de Becker, Joseph Ernest. 1899. The Nightless City, or the "History of the Yoshiwara Yakwaku."

Yokohama: Z. P. Maruya and Co.
Emer, P. C., ed. 1986. Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery.
Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

Engerman, Stanley L. 1973. "Some Considerations Relating to Property Rights in Man," 33Journal of Economic History 43-65.
- . 1986. "Servants to Slaves to Servants: Contract Labour and European Expansion," inP. C. Emer, ed., supra, pp. 263-94.

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

114 The Journal of Law. Economics, & Organization, V7 N1Feeny, David. 1989. "The Decline of Property Rights in Man in Thailand, 1800-1913," 49Journal of Economic History 285-96.
Fishback, Price V. 1986a. "Did Miners 'Owe their Souls to the Company Store'? Theory andEvidence from the Early 1900s," 46 Journal of Economic History 1011-29.
- . 1986b. "Workplace Safety during the Progressive Era: Fatal Accidents in Bituminous
Coal Mining, 1912-1923," 23 Explorations in Economic History 269-98.
, and Dieter Lauszus. 1989. "The Quality of Services in Company Towns: Sanitation in
Coal Towns During the 1920s," 49 Journal of Economic History 125-44.
Fruin, William Mark. 1973. "Labor Migration in Nineteenth-Century Japan: A Study Based on
Echizen Han." Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.
Fukumi, Takao. 1928. Teito ni okeru bai'in no kenkyui [A Study of Prostitution in the Capital].
Tokyo: Hakubunkan.
Fukuoka chih6 shokugy6 sh6kai jimu kyoku. 1928. Dekasegijok6 ni kansuru ch6sa [A Survey ofFemale Industrial Workers Employed away from Home]. Fukuoka: Fukuoka chiho shokugy6
sh6kai jimu kyoku.
Galenson, David W. 1984. "The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An

Economic Analysis," 44 Journal of Economic History 1-26.
Gardiner, C. Harvey. 1975. The Japanese and Peru, 1873-1973. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press.

Garon, Sheldon. 1991. "The World's Oldest Debate?: Prostitution and the State in Imperial
Japan, 1868-1945," unpublished manuscript, Princeton University, Department of History.
Grubb, Farley. 1985. "The Incidence of Servitude in Trans-Atlantic Migration, 1771-1804," 22Explorations in Economic History 316-38.
. 1988. "The Auction of Redemptioner Servants, Philadelphia, 1771-1804: An Economic Analysis," 48 Journal of Economic History 583-603.

Hane, Mikiso. 1982. Peasants, Rebels, and Outcastes: The Underside of Modern Japan. New
York: Pantheon Books.

Harsin, Jill. 1985. Policing Prdstitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press.

Higuchi, Monta. 1921. Geisha tetsugaku [Geisha Philosophy]. Tokyo: Jitsugaku kan.
Hobson, Barbara Meil. 1987. Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American
Reform Tradition. New York: Basic Books.

Ishijima, Kamejiro. 1928. "Chikagoro no jiyii haigy6 [Recent Free Cessation]," June Kakusei
24.

Ito, Hidekichi. 1931. Koto6ka no kanojo no seikatsu [The Lives of Women under the Red Lamps].
Tokyo: Jitsugy6 no nihon sha. Reprinted in 1982. Tokyo: Fuji shuppan.

Kakusei. 1931a. "Sh6gi karyuby6 ch6 [A Survey of Venereal Disease Among Licensed Prostitutes]," March Kakusei 20-1.
. 1931b. "Sh6wa gonen kyfiseigun no haisho undo [The 1930 Activities of the Salvation
Army in Furtherance of the Abolition of Licensed Prostitution]," June Kakusei 29-31.

Kanzaki, Kiyoshi. 1953. Musume o uru machi [Towns that Sell Daughters]. Tokyo: Shinko
shuppan sha.
Kawashima, Takeyoshi. 1950. "Jinshin baibai no rekishiteki seikaku [The Historical Character of

the Purchase and Sale of Humans]." Reprinted in Kawashima, Takeyoshi. 1982. Kawashima
Takeyoshi chosaku shiu [The Collected Works of Takeyoshi Kawashima], Vol. 1, pp. 80-96.
Tokyo: lwanami shoten.
. 1951. "Jinshin baibai no horitsu kankei (1) [The Legal Status of the Purchase and Sale of

Humans: I]," 68 Horitsu ky6kai zasshi 699-712.
. 1955. "Jinshin baibai keiyaku no hoteki k6ryoku [The Legal Effectiveness of Contracts
for the Purchase and Sale of Humans]," Sept. Horitsu jiho 72.
[Keishi cho] sokan kanbo bunsho ka. 1933. Sh6wa nana nen keishi ch6 tokei ichi ippan [AnOutline of Police Agency Statistics for 1932]. Tokyo: Sokan kanbo bunsho ka.
Keishi cho. 1935. Tamanoi Kameido sekkyakufu honseki narabi zenshaku kin shirabe [A Surveyof the Indentures and Hometowns of Tamanoi and Kameido Hostesses]. Reprinted in Nihon(1980), infra.

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indentured Prostitution in Japan 115

Klein, Benjamin, and Keith B. Leffler. 1981. "The Role of Market Forces in Assuring Contractual Performance," 89 Journal of Political Economy 615-41.

Kusama, Yasoo. 1930. Jokyi to baisho fu [Waitresses and Prostitutes]. Tokyo: Hanjin sha.
Kyo6kka no Tohoku noson (fukkoku ban) [Reprint: The Northeast Farm Villages during the
Panic]. 1984. Toyko: Funi shuppan.
Lee, Tom K., and I. P. L. Png. 1990. "The Role of Installment Payments in Contracts forServices," 21 Rand Journal of Economics 83-99.

Minami, Ry6shin. 1986. The Economic Development of Japan: A Quantitative Study.
Houndmills, U.K.: The Macmillan Press, Ltd.
Mnookin, Robert H., and Lewis Konhauser. 1979. "Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: The
Case of Divorce," 88 Yale Law Journal 950-97.
Murakami, Nobuhiko. 1971, Part II; 1972, Part II. Meiji josei shi [A History ofMeiji Women].
Tokyo: Riron sha.
Murphy, U. G. 1909. The Social Evil in Japan, 4th ed. Tokyo: Ky6bunkan.
Mustang Ranch, Inc. 1989. Common Stock Prospectus.
Naikaku t6kei kyoku. 1930. RodO tokei y6ran [Outline of Labor Statistics]. Tokyo: Tokyo tokei
ky6kai.
Nakamura, Sabur6. 1954. Nihon baishun torishimari k6 [A Treatise on the Regulation of Japanese Prostitution]. Tokyo: Nihon fuizoku kenkyti kai.
Nardinelli, Clark. 1982. "Corporal Punishment and Children's Wages in Nineteenth Century

Britain," 19 Explorations in Economic History 283-95.

Nihon fujin mondai shiryo shtisei [Collected Materials on Japanese Women's Issues]. 1980.
Tokyo: Domesu shuppan.
Nishimura, Nobuo. 1939. "Zenshakkin keiyaku ni tsuite [Regarding Indenture Contracts]," 7Minsho ho zasshi 418-34, 1022-37.

Nomi, Yoshihisa. 1980. "Case Comment," 97 H6gaku kyokai zasshi 577-85.

O'Callaghan, Sean. 1968. The Yellow Slave Trade: A Survey of the Traffic in Women andChildren in the East. London: Anthony Blond.
Ohsato, Katsuma, ed. 1966. Meiji iko honpo shuyo keizai tokei [Principal Economic Statisticsfor
our Nation since the Meiji Period]. Tokyo: Bank of Japan.
Okin, Susan Moller. 1990. "Feminism, the Individual, and Contract Theory," 100 Ethics 65869.

Okubo, Hanayuki. 1906. Kagai fizoku shi [A Record of the Customs of the Red-light District].
Tokyo: Ryfibun kan. Reprinted in 1983. Tokyo: Nihon tosho sentaa.
Oppler, Alfred C. 1976. Legal Reform in Occupied Japan. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press.

Pateman, Carole. 1983. "Defending Prostitution: Charges against Ericsson," 93 Ethics 561-5.

Popkin, Samuel L. 1979. The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in
Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Radin, Margaret Jane. 1987. "Market Inalienability," 100 Harvard Law Review 1849-937.
Ramseyer, J. Mark. 1989. "Water Law in Imperial Japan: Public Goods, Private Claims, andLegal Convergence," 18 Journal of Legal Studies 51-77.
---- , and Minoru Nakazato. 1989. "The Rational Litigant: Settlement Amounts and Verdict

Rates in Japan," 18 Journal of Legal Studies 263-90.
Rodosh6 fujin sh6nen kyoku. 1952. Fujin rodo no jitsuj6 [The Reality of Female Labor]. Tokyo:
R6d6sh6.

. 1953. Nenshosha no tokushu koyo kankL [Special Employment Customs of Minors].
Tokyo: R6dosh6.
Rosen, Ruth. 1982. The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Rosenzweig, Mark R., and Oded Stark. 1989. "Consumption Smoothing, Migration, and Marriage: Evidence from Rural India," 97 Journal of Political Economy 905-26.
Sait6, Naoshi. 1930. "Yuijo yiigei jin no uchimaku [The Inside Story of Young Female Entertainers]," 135 Jikei 67-9.
Saxonhouse, Gary R. 1976. "Country Girls and Communication Among Competitors in theThis content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

116 The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, V7 N1Japanese Cotton-Spinning Industry," in Hugh Patrick, ed., Japanese Industrialization and Its

Social Consequences, pp. 97-125. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Seiji keizai kenkyii sho. 1951. Nomin to rodo sha no seikatsu suijun no hendo [Changes in the
Living Standards of Farmers and Workers]. Tokyo: Seiji keizai kenkyi sho.
Shadwell, Arthur. 1911. "Prostitution," in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. 22, pp.

457-64. New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica Co.
Shakai jigy6 kenkyi jo. 1936. Shiro shonen shojo rodojijo chosa [Survey of Working Conditionsof Working Boys and Girls]. Tokyo: Chiu shakai jigy6 ky6kai.

Shakai kyoku. 1935. Tdhoku chih6 noson hihei jokyo (dai ni hen) [Poverty in the Northeast
Region Farm Villages], 2nd ed. Reprinted in Kyokoka (1984), supra.
Shrage, Laurie. 1989. "Should Feminists Oppose Prostitution?," 99 Ethics 347-61.
Sievers, Sharon L. 1983. Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern
Japan. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press.
Smethurst, Richard J. 1986. Agricultural Development and Tenancy Disputes in Japan, 18701940. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Somu ch6 t6kei kyoku. 1987. Nihon choki tokei soran [General Long-term Statisticsfor Japan],Vol. 4. Tokyo: S6mu cho.
Stewart, Watt. 1951. Chinese Bondage in Peru: A History of the Chinese Coolie in Peru, 1949-

1874. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Suehiro, Itsutar6. 1931. "Hanrei wo t6shite mita jinshin baibai [The Purchase and Sale of
Humans, Viewed through Case Law]," Sept. Horitsu jiho 3-5.
Symanski, Richard. 1981. The Immoral Landscape: Female Prostitution in Western Societies.
Toronto: Butterworth and Co.

Tamura, Goro. 1956. "Zenshakkin muk6 no hanketsu ni tsuite [Regarding the Case Holding
Indentures Void]," 63 H6gaku shimpo 436-63.

Uemura, Yukitada. 1918. Urare yuku onna [Sold Women]. Tokyo: Dait6 kaku. Reprinted in
1982. Kindai fujin mondai meichosaku sha zokuhen (A Collection of Famous Authors on
Women's Issues-Continued Series], Vol. 5. Tokyo: Nihon tosho sentaa.
. 1929. Nihon yiri shi [A History of the Japanese Pleasure Quarters]. Tokyo: Shun y6 do.
Wagatsuma, Sakae. 1923. "Hanrei yori miru 'ko no chitsujo zenry6 no ffzoku' ['Public Orderand Good Customs,' as Seen in the Case Law]," 41 Hogaku kyokai zasshi 904-46.
. 1955. "Zenshakkin muk6 no hanketsu [Case Holding Indenture Contracts Void]," 93
Jurisuto 23-5.

Walkowitz, Judith R. 1980. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williamson, Oliver E. 1983. "Credible Commitments: Using Hostages to Support Exchange,"
73 American Economic Review 519-40.

-- . 1985. The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. New York: The Free Press.
Yamamoto, Shun'ichi. 1983. Nihon kosho shi [A History of Licensed Prostitution in Japan].
Tokyo: Chiu h6ki shuppan.

Yonekura, Akira. 1985. "H6ritsu k6i [Legal Acts]," 59 Hogaku ky6shitsu 30-44; 60:28-42;
61:118-33; 62:30-45.

Yoshimi, Sh6ko. 1984. Baish6 no shakai shi [A Social History of Prostitution]. Tokyo:
Yiisankaku.

This content downloaded from
128.97.27.20 on Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:39:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms