RECOMMENDATIONS  FOR  JAPAN:
Draft and enact a comprehensive anti-trafficking law prohibiting all forms of trafficking consistent with the 2000 UNTIP Protocol; significantly increase efforts to investigate and prosecute forced labor cases and punish convicted traffickers with jail time; enact the TITP reform bill; increase enforcement of bans on excessive deposits, “punishment” agreements, withholding of passports, and other practices that contribute to forced labor in the TITP;

implement the newly expanded victim identification procedures for front-line officers to recognize both male and female victims of forced labor or sex trafficking; enhance screening of victims to ensure potential victims of trafficking are not detained or forcibly deported for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being subjected to trafficking; set aside resources to provide specialized care and assistance to trafficking victims, including designated shelters for trafficking victims; aggressively investigate, prosecute, convict, and punish Japanese nationals who engage in child sex tourism; and accede to the 2000 UN Transnational Organized Crime Convention and the TIP Protocol.

PROSECUTION
The government decreased anti-trafficking prosecution efforts. Japan’s criminal code does not prohibit all forms of trafficking in persons, as defined by international law, and the government relies on various provisions of laws relating to prostitution, abduction, child welfare, and employment to prosecute trafficking in persons crimes. Articles 7 through 12 of the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law prohibit prostitution-related crimes, including forced prostitution. Articles 225 through 227 of the 1907 Penal Code prohibit abduction by force or deception for various purposes (including for “profit” and “indecency”) and the buying or selling of human beings. Those provisions also criminalize delivering, receiving, transporting, or hiding—but not recruiting—a person for those purposes.The 1947 Employment Security Act makes it a crime for a person to engage in labor recruitment “by means of violence, intimidation, confinement, or other unjust restraint on mental or physical freedom” or to recruit laborers for “work harmful to public health or morals.” The government reports it relies on that law to prosecute forced labor, including sex trafficking. In addition, Japan’s 1947 Child Welfare Act broadly criminalizes harming a child—to include causing a child to commit an obscene act or an act harmful to the child—which has reportedly been the basis for prosecuting a defendant for subjecting a child to prostitution. However, the Child Welfare Act does not appear to cover all forms of child sex trafficking, as it does not reach the recruitment, transport, transfer, or receipt of a child for the purpose of prostitution. Articles 225 and 226 provide a 10-year maximum penalty for abducting by force or deception and for buying a person for the purpose of profit or indecency, which is sufficiently stringent and generally commensurate with penalties prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. However, transporting a person across international borders as part of those crimes of abduction and buying and selling a person to be abducted, bought, or sold is a lesser crime subject to a two-year maximum penalty. Other crimes relied on by Japanese prosecutors to prosecute trafficking offenses also carry insufficiently stringent penalties. An offender who prostitutes a child and is convicted of endangering a child’s welfare by “causing the child to commit an act making an impact that is mentally or physically harmful to the child” could be punished only with the payment of a fine, as the penalty is a maximum of three years’ imprisonment, a fine of the equivalent of one million yen ($8,000), or both. Similarly, to the extent the Employment Security Act criminalizes the recruitment prong of forced labor, the allowed maximum punishment of a minimum fine of 200,000 yen ($1,700) is insufficiently stringent. In addition, some forms of forced prostitution are punishable by a maximum of three years’ imprisonment or a fine. Others are subject to five years’ imprisonment without the alternative of a fine.
The government reported two prosecutions and one conviction under the trafficking provisions of its criminal code; otherwise

it utilized other nontrafficking provisions to prosecute possible trafficking crimes. The government investigated 32 cases for offenses related to human trafficking, compared with 28 in 2013, and convicted 17 sex traffickers, compared with 31 in 2013. Of the 17 convicted traffickers, five received prison sentences, eight received suspended sentences, and four received fines. Despite numerous reports and allegations of possible labor trafficking offenses under the TITP, including confiscation of passports, imposition of exorbitant fines, and arbitrary deduction of salaries resulting from non-contractual infractions, the government did not prosecute or convict traffickers involved in the use of TITP labor.The government reported investigating 661 cases of child prostitution; 507 resulted in prosecutions, compared with 709 in 2013. It was unclear how many resulted in convictions and how many of the cases involved child sex trafficking.The National Police Agency (NPA), Ministry of Justice (MOJ), Bureau of Immigration, and Public Prosecutor’s office continued to conduct numerous anti-trafficking trainings for senior investigators and police officers, prosecutors, judges, and immigration bureau officers on identifying victims and investigating trafficking cases. The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking offenses.

PROTECTION
The government’s protection efforts continued to be hampered by a narrow definition of human trafficking.The government has never identified a forced labor victim in theTITP, despite substantial evidence of trafficking indicators, including debt bondage, passport confiscation, and confinement. NPA officials identified 25 female sex trafficking victims, compared with 21 in 2013. Seven of the 12 Japanese nationals identified were children.The police reported identifying 464 victims of child prostitution. The government reported providing psychological counseling and medical care to victims of child prostitution. The government continued to lack trafficking victim-specific services, but funded Japan’s Women’s Consulting Center (WCC) shelters and domestic violence shelters, which assisted five of the trafficking victims. Other victims were assisted in NGO shelters or returned to their homes.WCC shelters provided food, basic needs, psychological care, and coverage of medical expenses, and allowed the victims to leave the facilities when accompanied by facility personnel. Japan continued to lack dedicated shelters or clearly defined resources for male victims.
NPA officials used an IOM-developed handbook and the Inter- Ministerial Liaison Committee’s manuals to identify victims and refer victims to available services. In 2014, a law enforcement task force developed a new anti-trafficking manual for frontline officers. Some victims were reluctant to seek government assistance due to the perception of a lack of protective services available to identified victims. No assistance to victims of forced labor or abused “interns” in the TITP was reported, as the government did not screen for or identify victims among this vulnerable population. The government-funded Legal Support Center provided pro bono legal services to destitute victims of crime for both criminal and civil cases; for the third consecutive year, it was unclear whether any trafficking victims applied for or received such services. Although the law prohibits trafficking victims from being punished for crimes committed as a result of being subjected to trafficking, some women in prostitution detained during police raids and arrested migrant workers were fined or deported without being screened for indicators of trafficking. Temporary, long term, and permanent residency benefits were available to victims who feared returning to their home country; the government granted two