During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japanese women from impoverished rural communities became a new international workforce called the karayuki-san. Karayuki-san were sex workers positioned throughout Asia using an exploitative system of human trafficking.
Like in some countries today, sex work was a legal profession throughout Southeast Asia. The karayuki-san helped bring Japanese culture and goods to the rest of Asia and established the red light district in Singapore.
These sex workers were sent to Australia, throughout Southeast Asia, and into the hands of European imperialists in the region. Starting in in two brothels in colonial Singapore, Japanese sex workers known as karayuki-san - translated literally as "going to China" or "going to a foreign land" - were hired primarily from peasant families in the Nagasaki region.
The two establishments in the s started with as few as 14 workers, but those establishments grew into Singapore's red light district in the following decades. As Japan expanded its imperial interests and grew its economy, the state became aware of the importance of sex work in establishing political relations with Europe's colonial powers. Throughout Southeast Asia, men were imported from across Europe's colonial empires, and Japanese merchants brought karayuki-san to China and Southeast Asia to satisfy the needs of those men.
Mediators negotiated with poor rural families to recruit girls for relocation overseas. They were told they would have opportunities to make money, but not that they were being sold as sex workers. Some girls and women went on their own, without their family's involvement. The mediators would then find a ship captain willing to take the women. The young women were exploited; they were charged hefty fees to be taken abroad, which they were required to pay back.
