This is a difficult one for me as I've had dealings with so many amazing groups, communities and organisations over the last few years.

I consider myself to be a modern-day abolitionist. Basically, if there is a major issue facing society, I suspect that there's some kind of economic or political privilege at the root of the problem which should be abolished. The issue of human trafficking and severe labour exploitation is particularly urgent.

I'm going to talk about a Japanese NGO called Lighthouse: Center for Human Trafficking Victims. I first got to know them back when they were called Polaris Project Japan. They're the only NGO in Japan that's dedicated solely to the problem of trafficking in persons (TIP).

Back in 2011, I asked a Japanese woman why she thought foreigners came to her country to work as prostitutes. She said that they came from poor countries and Japan was like heaven to them. I'd only recently began researching the issue, but I'd already come across several stories of women who thought they were being brought to the country to work in a shop or get a job as a model, only to find out on arrival that they were expected to become prostitutes. They had their passports taken away and were told that the police would arrest them if they found out that they were prostitutes.

Lighthouse help to train police officers on how to recognise when someone is a victim of TIP rather than a criminal. They also run the national helpline where victims call call for help or advice if they're too afraid to approach the police or don't know who else to turn to.

Severe labour exploitation is an issue in Japan. When someone asks Lighthouse where this is happening, they've been known to get in a car and start driving in a random direction and keep going until they find a factory with foreign workers. They've never failed to find victims using that approach.

One of the more overt forms of human trafficking in Japan is the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). I'm not talking about the sexualised images of children that are on billboards, but the sale of sexual acts with children under 18 years of age and the production of images of children who are naked or performing sexual acts.

In downtown Tokyo, parents who are living in poverty will pimp their young children. A man once tried to convince me to pay for sex with a 15 year old as I was walking down a busy street.

A female friend once told me the price of sex with a 12 year old girl. I knew that what she was saying was legitimate as she worked with some shady characters. She told me that she did some work on a computer game where the main character went around murdering people and, in one scene, punched the teeth out of a 9 year old girl so that he could fit his phallus into her little mouth.

I said that CSEC is fairly overt in Japan, which is true, but that doesn't mean that it's talked about or that everyone is aware of how widespread or close to their homes it is. The Founder of Lighthouse, Shihoko Fukiwara, is one of the very few people in the country who will speak openly in public about this form of crime. She shines a light on something that a conservative society would rather have remain in the dark.

When the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters happened in northern Japan, Lighthouse started a side project to produce materials which would advise women in evacuation centres on how to stay safe (if electricity was cut off, a trip to the toilet in the middle of the night could result in rape). I tried helping them to raise funds to have the materials printed, but one donor who pledged money called me the next say to say that they'd changed their mind because they didn't want to be involved with such a taboo subject. This mindset is typical of the landscape in which Lighthouse works.

Japan no specific anti-TIP laws and Lighthouse is lobbying for this to change. Even small wins can be difficult when government officials are in denial (a few years ago, the Justice Minister refused to have leaflets with information of who victims can contact handed out in the arrivals hall of airports because it would embarrass the country).

Lighthouse is the best hope for victims of human trafficking in Japan. For reasons to which I alluded above, they're smaller than they ought to be and they really, really need our support.
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