Prostitution Still A Problem In Japan

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30822, 6 August 1965, Page 2

Prostitution Still A Problem In Japan

Although prostitution was delicensed in Japan after the Second World War, it was still a problem in the cities and a prohibition association had been formed to try r to wipe out the practices, said Miss Tomo lida, of Osaka, in Christchurch yesterday.

Miss lida, a past-president of the Osaka chapter of the Japanese Federation of University Women, said her organisation was affiliated to the Prostitution Prohibition Association and had made a detailed study of the living conditions of street girls and the reasons for their turning to soliciting for a living.

“Many women’s organisations are affiliated to the association and we have appealed to the Government to enforce prohibition,” she said. In the meantime the association is doing all it can to have prostitutes taught a trade to support themselves, she said. Miss lida is the leader of a party of four Japanese graduates, now on a brief visit to Christchurch on their way to Brisbane for the International

Federation of University Women’s conference. “I suppose I am the leader because I am the oldest, but for no other reason,” she said. A graduate of Tsuda College in Tokyo and the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, Miss lida is head of the English department of a junior women’s college in Osaka and is responsible for all students of practical English.

During the war years she worked in the Philippines as an English interpreter and returned there to attend a conference of the International Federation of University Women some years later. The Brisbane conference of the international organisation will be her third. With her are Mrs Mine Furusawa, also a graduate of Tsuda College, Miss Misa Murata (Nara Women’s University), and Miss Kaneko Watanabe (Women’s University of Japan). Both Miss lida and Miss Murata are past presidents of the Osaka chapter of the Japanese Federation of University Women. “Seven universities are represented on our chapter and delegates from them take turns in the office of president,” Miss lida said.