Morality is a slippery subject. Everyone agrees there is such a thing, and most people (certainly all cultures) think they know it when they see it — but what most people think they know is no guide to anything.

Licensed prostitution came to an end in Japan on Feb. 2, 1946. Foreigners had long sniffed at Japan’s tolerance — nay, celebration — of prostitution. Had Christian morality ruled the Edo Period (1603-1868), the famed yūkaku (pleasure quarters) would have been nipped in the bud and the era’s vibrant urban culture would have been sadly impoverished — or morally enriched, as defenders of the human rights of the girls and women bought and sold within the quarters would say. Japan under foreign occupation bent to the morality of its new masters. The quarters were shuttered.

The Occupation ended in 1952 but Japan stayed the course the occupiers had charted. In 1956 came the Prostitution Prevention Law — which did not prevent prostitution but did lay down some strictures. It was “a limited symbolic victory for those who argued that women should be free from the indignity of being treated as property that can be bought and sold,” writes historian Sally Hastings in an essay titled “Disputing Rights: The Debate over Anti-Prostitution Legislation of 1950s Japan.” “Although acts of prostitution were never declared illegal, (at least) selling a daughter was no longer legal.”