Appendix D - An Open Letter to the Japanese Prime Minister from Thai Women (1981)

Summary

During the official trip to Thailand of the Japanese Prime Minister Senko Suzuki in mid-January 1981, various organizations hadjoinedforces to campaign against the “sex tours” organized by Japanese tourist companies. This letter was submitted to the Japanese Prime Minister.

19th January 1981

His Excellency Senko Suzuki

Dear Mr. Prime Minister

We, in the name of a group of Thai citizens, would like to welcome your excellency to Thailand. We are informed that the purpose of your visit to our country is to cement the existing friendly relations between Japan and Thailand, and to personally study some of the problems at first hand. Hence, we would like to take this occasion to draw your attention to a serious and urgent problem which concerns both citizens of Japan and Thailand.

At present, the relationship between the two peoples is being eroded by the uncontrolled growth of “sex tourism” similar to the cases in the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan.

In 1979, Japanese tourists were the most numerous among the 1,500,000 tourist to Thailand. Out of the total 89,140 Japanese tourists who visited our country that year, 70,304 were men and only 18,840 were women, that the first constituted almost 80%. The same discrepancy is also apparent in the case of the Philippines where more than 80% of the total Japanese tourists are men. In contrast, there is no such male dominance in the number of Japanese tourists to European countries and the United States, which are all developed and industrialised countries.

Investigations in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand all point to one conspicuous fact that the main attraction that draws this unusually high number of Japanese men to these Asian countries is the overwhelming and overt existence of sex services. In Bangkok alone, there are 1,157 places of entertainment which offer sex services and the number of women involved in these services amounts to a staggering 300,000. Moreover, thousands of Thai women are “exported” to provide such services even in Japan.