When Noini Buendia was 15, she was as pretty as a rosebud and sang like a canary.
One day a recruiter showed up at her mother`s house and said Noini
”could make a fortune” as an entertainer in Japan.
Noini blushed with pleasure at the woman recruiter`s lavish compliments. Mrs. Buendia happily stuffed the recruiter`s 300 peso ($22) down payment into a clay jar on her wardrobe, hoping the money was the start of something big.
As the three women discussed the details of Noini`s fate as a Japayuki (a young woman who goes to Japan), her mother told the recruiter that her daughter was ”a good girl.” In local jargon, that meant she was a virgin.
As Noini recalled, the recruiter`s eyes just sparkled.
Noini is just one of thousands of young Filipina women who end up in Japan and other nations each year seeking work, money and fame.
Overall, they are an important source of foreign earnings for their financially strapped country.
According to government statistics, the export of workers from the Philippines accounts for $1.1 billion in foreign currency annually-more than any other source.
Not all of them suffer Noini`s fate. Instead of a career as an entertainer, she ended up in a degrading brothel in Japan where she was beaten and raped by brutal customers.
In contrast, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos routinely leave their country for all sorts of jobs in faraway lands as domestics, nurses or other occupations lined up by the government`s program to export workers. But more often than many officials in the Philippines like to admit, the government-sanctioned worker export program also serves as a pipeline feeding pretty Filipinas to Japan`s thriving sex industry.
”Japanese men are afraid of being refused by Japanese women,” said Dr. Sussumu Oda, a Tsukuba University psychiatrist and professor of mental health who believes the sex industry will continue to prosper in Japan. ”However, they feel superior to other Asian women culturally and economically. Paid sex usually satisfies a man`s desire to control a woman.”
For Noini, the story of her fall from innocence began when the recruiter noticed her after classes outside her high school in Manila. In all, the recruiter approached five girls in her class. Noini and three others ended up in Japan.
The process by which they got there involves no nether world of secret payments or pimps in black hats and pin-striped suits.
It almost always begins in a dilapidated government building in Intramuros, Manila`s historic center.
There, a panel of five government judges conduct daily ”quality control” auditions for the 40,000 ”entertainers” or ”cultural dancers”
who seek foreign work permits every month.
Even for those who avoid Noini`s fate, getting a chance to go to Japan as an ”entertainer” isn`t easy. First of all, they must get past the government-staged auditions.
Social workers say the story of Rosa Leynes, a 15-year-old youth who is officially listed as 18, isn`t unusual. She and seven other teenagers were brought to Manila by an agent who put them up in a room of his suburban home while they prepared for an audition.
Each had a floor mat, two bowls of rice and a dried fish each day while a moody choreographer with failed ballet ambitions tried to instill a sense of rhythm into their belly dances and mambo steps.
They were ”civilized” for two months, taught how to use makeup, serve tea, pour drinks, how to dress, how to strut on high heels, how to bow and how to wipe drinking glasses.
”Every day we signed chits for food, accommodation and dance lessons. All those chits, our airfare and document expenses would come out of our wages. But we only realized that later,” Rosa recalled.
On the day of the audition, the agent drove them to the Philippine Overseas Workers Welfare Agency, an entity attached to the Labor Ministry. It charges 40 pesos ($1.80) for each audition and issues the coveted yellow card required under a bilateral agreement with Japan to certify, at least on paper, that a girl is an ”entertainer” or ”cultural dancer.”
”The corridors were crowded with girls,” Rosa recalled. ”Five judges, three men and two women, sat behind a table. The judges looked at us for about half a minute then stopped the music. (One) girl was told to come back. She had arrived from the village the day before and she really could not dance a single step. She began to cry.”
The girls who got yellow cards were driven to a motel where a panel of Japanese entrepreneurs watched them dance.
”They made us open our mouths and examined our teeth and wanted to see the medical certificate which stated none of us was pregnant.”
A week later, Rosa and her three companions were at Tokyo`s airport on the usual six-month work visa. Another agent took them to a car and drove to Saitama-Ken, outside Tokyo, stopping at the New Hakuba Bar.
”We soon found out there was not much dancing to be done for the $350 a month. The customers simply asked for girls to sit with them. They were allowed to fondle and cuddle. They liked to touch our breasts,” Rosa said.
”The first time I complained. But when the mama-san told me not to be so squeamish if I wanted to earn my wages, I didn`t complain any more. I suppose it was part of the job. After our six-month contract expired, none of us went back home as virgins, although I was never forced to sleep with anyone.”
Rosa might be considered lucky.
Noini followed the same path from the Philippines. After she and three others arrived at the Tokyo airport, an agent picked them up and drove to Yamansashi-Ken province, a five-hour ride from Tokyo. The car stopped at the Shaneru Club, a large motel. It was dark.
”It was a maze of rooms,” she recalled. ”The papa-san said, `Get dressed, you`re going to work right away.` I was tired from the trip, but I obeyed. I took a shower, put on my best dress and my best makeup. The papa-san came back and said, `You`re ready?` I wanted to follow him down to the dance floor, but he said, `Wait here` and closed the door.
”I knew then something was wrong. I took out my rosary and began to pray. Then the door opened and a very fat and ugly Japanese came in. He was old. He just looked at me and pushed me on the bed. I struggled and yelled, but no one heard me. He raped me. I was still a virgin then. I know now he paid between $2,000 and $3,000 for a first night.”
The unwitting Noini had been channeled into a dark side of modern Japan-its sex industry. According to a range of experts, philandering by men in Japan is widespread. Faced with a declining population of eligible women, pressure from long hours at work, experts say Japanese men often seek relief from their stress by flocking to bars and nightclubs after work for business entertainment or private pleasure.
Since most companies routinely pick up entertainment bills, experts such as Oda, the university psychiatrist, say the industry has flourished, spawning a demand for young women such as Noini.
”For the next four months,” Noini recalled, ”I was locked in that room. A guard was on the floor outside. Each night three, four, sometimes five men would come in and have sex with me. I just let it happen. They could do with me what they wanted. There was no one I could protest to.
”Some beat me up before making love. Some tied me to the bedpost. Some ordered me to do things I never want to remember. I was slapped around. Sometimes they rushed in and jumped on me, tearing off my dress, my bra and panties and pulling my hair in a make-believe rape. I just submitted.
”I was given three meals a day. The tray was put in my room without a word. Sometimes I was given a new dress. Some customers left a tip, but the guard took it. I wouldn`t touch it.
”I never talked to anyone in four months, not even the clients. I never saw daylight in those four months. There was no window in my room. My skin and hair became very dry.
”Often I knocked at the wall, and the girl in the next room knocked back. That way I knew someone was alive. One night the guards and the papa-san dragged a Filipina along the corridor by her hair. They beat and kicked and cursed her as if she was a man. I think she had tried to run away. I never thought of running away again.
”One day, after four months, a customer came in. He was nice. He had one finger missing. I told him my story and he left. Ten minutes later, he came back with my passport. He must have paid for it. `Let`s go,` he said. He took me home. He bought me an airline ticket to Manila and gave me some pocket money because I was not given a single yen by the papa-san. He never touched me. I realized later he was a Yakuza (Japanese gangster).
”I don`t know what happened to the other Filipinas who came with me. I never saw any of them again.”
Noini returned to the Philippines, but the worst part of her story was yet to come. Rather than live in the grinding poverty back home, Noini, already abused and degraded, went back for more.
”I went back to Japan for three more tours of six months,” she said.
”Now I am waiting for my visa for a fourth tour. Today I can earn $1,000 a month because I speak fluent Japanese.
”If I don`t go back, who will pay for the schooling for my four brothers and sisters? Now I have brought my family to Manila. We are reasonably well off. No one else in my family will have to go to Japan. I gave my family a better life. I`m a good Catholic and I love God, and I know He will forgive me because I really never wanted to do these things, believe me.
”None of us will complain because the authorities will laugh at us and say: `Why did you go?`
”We return from Japan with lots of presents and (are) well-dressed. We are the dream of any girl who wants to help her family. I could never tell a Filipino what I told you. They would consider me the lowest possible person in the world. I could not face that. Everyone here pretends.
”That`s the way it is. . . .”
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NEXT: Asia`s anti-slavery movement.
