Moeka Iida

speaker

279 appearances 5 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 22 Jul

Moeka Iida’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.

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The Intelligence from The Economist · View from the summit: what did the G7 achieve? · 17 Jun 2026 podcast

So at the end of last year, there was sensational news about a 12-year-old Thai girl who was trafficked to Japan and was forced to have sex with men at a brothel in Tokyo.

That sparked a lot of outrage.

And another has to do with the growing visibility of street prostitution in Tokyo.

So a lot of the sex trade in Japan happens behind

And closed doors.

Mai finds her clients on social media and then visits them at hotels.

But recently there's been growing visibility of women standing outside in the streets and selling sex.

So there's a park called Okuba Park in Tokyo, around Tokyo's Red Light District, which has become a notorious pickup spot.

And this has been a thing since around COVID.

I've walked around this area myself and at its peak a few years ago.

You will see rows of young women usually wearing short skirts, standing on the streets, and they're waiting for someone to pick them up.

So it is quite a scene, and photos and videos of these women have circulated online and sparked a lot of public debate.

So what is the debate actually

having the debate?

I think people associate street prostitution as something that happens in like poor countries.

So online there were a lot of people commenting on these pictures of women on a Cuba park saying, I can't believe this is happening in Japan or this feels like something that would happen in a developing country.

And I think this is linked to anxieties about the economy in the country.

And also people have noticed that a lot of the customers walking around Okuba Park are foreigners.

So the weak yen has been blurring a lot of tourists to the country.

There's also been a rise in sex tourism linked to that.

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