Key facts
- Legal experts proposed penalizing clients for soliciting sex.
- Current law punishes sex workers but not their customers.
- Campaigners advocate for a "Nordic model" that criminalizes buyers.
Japan should overhaul its prostitution law to punish those who seek to buy sex, experts recommended on September 17, 2026. The proposals are likely to lead to changes in the decades-old legislation, which currently penalizes sex workers but not their customers.
The panel of legal experts proposed in a report that clients also be penalized for solicitation both in public and online, calling for the abolition of this asymmetry. Some campaigners have demanded a "Nordic model" that decriminalizes selling sex while criminalizing paying for it, adopted by countries like Sweden, Norway and France.
However, the panel did not recommend decriminalizing sex work altogether or redefining prostitution to include acts beyond vaginal intercourse. Some sellers, the panel said, "willingly" joined the sex trade and their solicitation "disrupts social order".