chapter 23 Selling Sex in Singapore: The Development, Expansion, and Policing of Prostitution in an International Entrepôt
Shawna Herzog
Introduction
Commercial sex has been an available and important part of Singapore’s econ- omy and society since Sir Stamford Raffles—representative of the British East India Company (e.i.c.)—negotiated Singapore’s acquisition in 1819. Before this, it was a small Malaysian fishing village ruled by the Johor Sultanate and used by the Temmenggong, the sultan’s military leadership, as a personal get- away from politically tumultuous court life. The island retreat would certainly have included a population of slaves to attend to both the domestic and sexual needs of its residents.1 Until the late eighteenth century, women were incon- spicuous commodities in Southeast Asian slave markets, and native, Arab, and Chinese merchants sold them throughout ancient trading networks. Since at least the fourteenth century, the southern tip of the Malayan Peninsula was a vital artery of trade for merchants in Southeast Asia, which connected the eastern and western hemispheres. Stopping between the silver mines in Latin America and the spice and luxury markets in Asia, Spanish and Portuguese merchants traded with local chiefs for women in ports throughout the Philip- pines and along the Malayan coast to solidify business relationships in the late
1 Abdulla Munshi, The Hikayat Abdullah : An Annotated Translation, trans. A. H. Hill ( Kuala Lumpur, 1970), pp. 140–147; Carl Trocki, Singapore: Wealth, Power, and the Culture of Control (New York, 2006), pp. 21–47; Carl Trocki, Prince of Pirates: The Temenggongs and the Develop- ment of Johor and Singapore, 1784–1885 (Singapore, 1979), pp. 1–6; Barbara Watson Andaya, “Temporary Wife to Prostitute: Sexuality and Economic Change in Early Modern Southeast Asia”, Journal of Women’s History, 9 (1998), pp. 11–34, 13. Andaya’s description of society and the roles of women and slaves during this period in Southeast Asian society, supports this presumption. Moreover, during times of difficulty, slaves often chose to sell their bodies as an additional means to support their household (p. 14). While this type of behaviour was not likely exemplary for women and girls of the upper classes, contemporary Southeast Asian society did not see the choice of selling sexual services with the same negative moral judge- ment as their European colonizers.
© Shawna Herzog, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004346253_024 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.Shawna Herzog - 9789004346253 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 10:18:21PM via free access Selling Sex in Singapore 595 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.2 During this period, merchants frequent- ly negotiated for a local “wife” or concubine to gain access to local markets; these women were important assets because, in addition to providing domes- tic labour and serving sexual desires, they functioned as intermediaries and formed critical connections within the community necessary for successful trade.3 The Dutch maintained this practice for hundreds of years and by end of the eighteenth century they had formed vital relationships with local women of influence in the region, which allowed them to reap remarkable profits in Indonesia and build a global empire. However, these relationships were eroded by emerging ideas of nationalism and racial degeneration. Eventually, concu- binage, and the resulting métis/métisse, or “mixed-blood” children became a threat to imperial power and the colonial government strongly discouraged marriages with indigenous women.4 Moreover, in addition to these more per- manent relationships, there were also taverns, inns, and opium dens in which men could purchase more temporary encounters with slave girls or local women who performed sex work as an income supplement. By the nineteenth century, individual entrepreneurs, businessmen, and women from around the region capitalized on the growing demand for domestic and sexual services from increasing populations of migrant male labourers and began to import women and girls to supply a growing commercial trade for colonial centres throughout Southeast Asia. Britain’s development of Singapore into an international entrepôt during the first half of the nineteenth century changed well-established trading pat- terns and brought both a demand for and supply of commercial sex to the island. Singapore’s development as a hub for British power in the latter half of the nineteenth century offered employment opportunities for millions of unattached male labourers from around the world; at the same time, the col- ony became a primary distribution centre for the trade in women and girls who provided these labourers with highly sought after domestic and sexual
2 For more on women in “early modern” Southeast Asia, see Barbara Watson-Andaya, Other Pasts: Women, Gender and History in Early Modern Southeast Asia (Honolulu, 2000). For more on early colonial concubinage in Southeast Asia, see Tamara Loos, “A History of Sex and the State in Southeast Asia: Class, Intimacy and Invisibility”, Citizenship Studies, 12 (2008), pp. 27–43. 3 Loos, “A History of Sex and the State in Southeast Asia”, pp. 31–37. 4 Ann Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, 2002), pp. 22–110; Jean Gilman-Taylor, The Social World of Batavia: Europeans and Eurasians in Colonial Indonesia (Madison, 1983), pp. 91–113.
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5 James Francis Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki-San: Prostitution in Singapore 1870–1940 (Singa- pore, 2003), pp. 67–72. 6 Jin Hui Ong, “Singapore”, in Nanette Davis, (ed.), Prostitution: An International Handbook on Trends, Problems, and Policies (London, 1993), pp. 243–272, 246. 7 Ibid.
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Historiography
While Southeast Asia is a relatively understudied region, there are a few impor- tant studies that demonstrate the critical connections between prostitution, the trade economy, and the implementation of political power in Singapore.9 Until the last decades of the twentieth century, scholars working on Southeast Asian history had largely ignored the influence of women and gender on its past. Focused on the paths of emerging independent nations, the bulk of his- torical research about Southeast Asia sought primarily to describe developing nationalisms, and the influential men that drove these movements, which fu- elled and shaped later independence movements. Women, as primary subjects of historical enquiry, did not enter the discourse until the late 1990s.10 Since then, like most other fields of history, Southeast Asian scholars have begun
8 It is important to note that there have been, and still are, plenty of women voluntarily go- ing to Singapore to work as prostitutes; but, it is difficult to tell if someone has voluntarily immigrated, or if recruiters or traffickers coerced or kidnapped them, took them against their will, and forced them—directly or indirectly—to prostitute themselves. As this chapter demonstrates, attempting to differentiate between the two has historically been a primary focus of anti-trafficking policies and governmental legislation in Singapore. 9 The following studies are some of the key works shaping our current understanding of prostitution in Singapore: Watson-Andaya, “Temporary Wives to Prostitute”; Antho- ny Reid, “The Decline of Slavery in Nineteenth Century Indonesia”, in Martin A. Klein, (ed.), Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia (Madison, 1993), pp. 65–79; Ong, “Singapore”, pp. 243–272; Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York, 2004), passim; Philip Howell, Geographies of Regulation: Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Brit- ain and the Empire (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 188–229; James Warren, Pirates, Prostitutes and Pullers: Explorations in the Ethno- and Social History of Southeast Asia (Crawley, Australia, 2008), pp. 220–309; Warren, Ah Ku and Karayuki-san, pp. 25–91; Loos, “A History of Sex and the State in Southeast Asia”, pp. 27–43. 10 Watson-Andaya, Other Pasts, pp. 1–7.
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Selling Sex in Precolonial Singapore and Southeast Asia
The southern portion of the Malayan Peninsula connects the eastern and west- ern hemispheres and has long been a vital artery of trade for merchants in Southeast Asia. Before British colonization at the end of the eighteenth centu- ry, the small island of Singapore, or “Singapura”, was merely a small fishing vil- lage and private retreat for Malay royalty and officials.11 Long before the arrival of Europeans, women were an important commodity in Southeast Asian slave markets and sold by native, Arab, and Chinese merchants throughout trade networks that by the beginning of the seventeenth century encompassed the globe.12 In the late seventeenth century, Spanish and Portuguese merchants travelling between the silver mines in Latin America and the spice and luxury markets in Asia began trading with local chiefs for women in ports throughout the Philippines and along the Malayan coast to solidify business relationships.13
11 Trocki, The Prince of Pirates, pp. 21–30. 12 Shawna Herzog, “Convenient Compromises: A History of Slavery and Abolition in the British East Indies, 1795–1841” (Unpublished Ph.D., Washington State University Depart- ment of History, 2013), pp. 136–179; Richard Allen, “Suppressing a Nefarious Traffic: Britain and the Abolition of Slave Trading in India and the Western Indian Ocean, 1770–1830”, The William and Mary Quarterly, 66 (2009), pp. 873–894; Richard B. Allen, “Satisfying the ‘Want for Laboring People’: European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850”, Jour- nal of World History, 21 (2010), pp. 45–73. 13 For more on women in early modern Southeast Asia, see Andaya, Other Pasts, Chapters 4–7. Additional discussion of early colonial concubinage in Southeast Asia can be found in Loos, “A History of Sex and the State in Southeast Asia”, pp. 27–43.
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These merchants often negotiated for a local “wife”, or concubine. Here women were important assets because, in addition to providing domestic labour and appeasing sexual desires, they also functioned as important intermediaries and formed critical connections linking them to, as Southeast Asian historian Barbara Watson-Andaya describes, “a network of kin” within the community that was necessary for successful trade.14 At first, because these relationships were still rare, the women also acquired a great deal of prestige by having a for- eign husband or lover.15 In fact, this system allowed the Dutch to reap remark- able profits in Indonesia; they formed relationships with local women with influence in the region, which allowed them to dominate trade for nearly 300 years.16 However, during the end of the eighteenth century, changes within the indigenous elite and the encroachment of European imperial centres caused a shift in attitudes towards these women and their sexuality. Additionally, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, European ideas were also changing. Emerging nationalist perceptions of European superiority and fears of racial degeneration initiated a shift in opinions about colonial societies and Europe- ans began to denigrate and castigate these intercultural relationships.17 Euro- peans believed that concubinage, and the resulting metis/se, or “mixed-blood” children threatened imperial power and colonial governments strongly dis- couraged interracial intimacies.18 Consequently, as Watson-Andaya explains, “foreigners increasingly preferred slaves, or ex-slaves who could act as both servants and sexual partners, [and] the status of the temporary wife was per- manently eroded.”19
The Colonial Period
Although Europeans were well established in Southeast Asia by the beginning of the nineteenth century and had already explored a variety of intimate re- lationships with native women, it is unlikely that the small fishing village of
14 Ibid., pp. 31–37. 15 Watson-Andaya, “Temporary Wives to Prostitute”, p. 13. 16 For a concise description of Dutch history in Southeast Asia, see Anthony Reid, Chart- ing the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia (Chiang Mai, 1999), pp. 92–99, 155–179; Eric Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865–1915 (New Haven, 2005), pp. 1–19, 28–47. 17 Gilman-Taylor, The Social World of Batavia, p. 99. 18 Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial, pp. 22–110; Gilman-Taylor, The Social World of Bata- via, pp. 91–113. 19 Watson-Andaya, “Temporary Wives to Prostitute”, p. 11.
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Singapore had more than a few—if any—local women supplementing their incomes before the British arrived.20 In fact, it was Britain’s colonization of Singapore in 1819 that laid the foundations for the island’s sex market; the Empire’s aversion to interracial marriage combined with shifts in the percep- tions of local elites initiated restrictions that encouraged the development of a commercial sex trade. In contrast to other European empires, the British con- cerned themselves with the sexuality of their subjects early on in their imperial projects, and although they were relatively ineffective, the authorities cre- ated policies to prohibit the familial connections that were often established in interracial relationships and marriages in other colonial outposts around the globe.21 Much earlier than the French or the Dutch, the British sought a solution to the complications and challenges caused by the intimacies of con- cubinage, such as interracial children, unconventional family loyalties, and challenges to imperial policy. Fearing racial degeneration, religious corruption, and the collapse of social constructs, the British began defining themselves in opposition to the “others” far beyond their shores.22 Eventually, the Empire outlawed interracial marriage “among the higher ranks” throughout all of its colonies. In response, officials in India and the e.i.c. supplied British military encampments with a contracted labour force of prostitutes regulated by colo- nial authorities.23 Within this setting, British officials believed that prostitu- tion was a solution to, and a preferable alternative for, either homosexuality or long-term relationships with indigenous women. Since Singapore was a colony administered first by the e.i.c at the India Office and then by the Colonial Of- fice, these perceptions offer some insight into why officials initially attempted to regulate rather than prohibit prostitution altogether. Established as a trading station, Singapore initially had very few female im- migrants and colonial officials worried about the disproportionate ratio of men to women. An 1830 census revealed that there were only 4,121 women com- pared to 12,213 men in the colony.24 Although the colonial government banned the slave trade in British territories, there is evidence that local authorities
20 Andaya, Other Pasts, pp. 1–7. 21 Stoler’s Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power is the premier work on this subject. In her study, she clearly illustrates shifts in European ideology and imperial paranoia about colonial intimacies for fear of racial degeneration and compromises of imperial power relationships. 22 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (Yale, 1992), pp. 2–7. 23 Betty Joseph, Reading the East India Company, 1720–1840: Colonial Currencies of Gender (Chicago, 2004), pp. 100, 104–105; Karen Weierman, One Nation, One Blood : Interracial Marriage in American Fiction, Scandal, and Law, 1820–1870 (Amherst, 2005), pp. 45–48. 24 “Census”, Singapore Chronicle, 15 July 1830.
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25 William Evans, Slave Trade (East India) Slavery in Ceylon: Copies or Abstracts of All Corre- spondence Between the Directors of the E.I.C. and the Company’s Government in India, Since the 1st Day of June 1827, on the Subject of Slavery in the Territories Under the Company’s Rule: Also Communications Relating to the Subject of Slavery in the Island of Ceylon (London, 1838), pp. 237–239. 26 Evans, Slave Trade (East India) Slavery in Ceylon, p. 306. 27 Reid, “Decline of Slavery in Indonesia”, p. 71. 28 Correspondence Respecting the Alleged Existence of Chinese Slavery in Hong Kong: Present- ed to Both Houses of Parliament by Command of her Majesty (London, 1882), pp. 37–49.
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29 Carl Trocki’s Prince of Pirates and James Warren’s Ah ku and Karayuki-San both examine the development of Singapore’s labour market as well as the thriving economy within it, which attended to the needs of displaced workers passing through the international port. 30 I am deliberately invoking the language of Luise White’s work, The Comforts of Home (Chi- cago, 1990), pp. 6–37 to illustrate the vital function prostitutes performed in colonial soci- ety, as well as how various administrators reacted to and accommodated their presence. 31 Sir John Hobhouse, Slavery (East Indies): Return to an Order of the Honorable (The House of Commons, 22 April 1841), p. 111. 32 Hobhouse, Slavery (East Indies), p. 109.
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33 The Straits Times, 17 October 1855, p. 1. 34 “Sobriety”, Singapore Chronicle, 23 June 1831. 35 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki-San, pp. 32–36. 36 During this period, according to colonial records the British deemed “traffickers” to be those in the business of illegally purchasing, selling, and/or transporting people from one place to another. Evans, Returns: Slave Trade (East India), pp. 3–4. The label of “trafficker” automatically implied the illegal transportation of people across political borders and was associated with the slave trade. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, antislavery associations and women’s groups worked to prohibit regulated brothels within the British Empire and created a more inclusive and expansive definition of both perpetrator and victim. As Carina Rays’ research illustrates, by the beginning of the twentieth century, trafficking had become a much more specific legal concept which focused on underage girls who were forced, coerced, or manipulated under false pretences. A trafficker was anyone who assisted in the procurement or transportation of these girls for “immoral pur- poses or to gratify another person’s passions within and across national borders” (p. 102). In the late 1920s, the newly formed League of Nations took up the task of investigating the issue, and it added young boys to their scope of victims and by the late 1930s the defini- tion included adult women trafficked across international borders. For more see: Carina Ray, “Sex Trafficking, Prostitution, and the law, in Colonial British West Africa, 1911–43”, in Benjamin Lawrence and Richard L. Roberts (eds), Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa (Athens, oh, 2012), pp. 101–120, 102–105. In the 1950s, the United Nations took up trafficking as an issue of human rights, but the Cold War complicated the enforcement of relatively vague international laws. A survey
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Phillip Howell illustrate that in the second half of the nineteenth century, Sin- gapore had clearly identified and geographically segregated commercial sex districts that were organized according to the ethnicity of the clientele.37 By the last decade of the nineteenth century, both the wealthy and poor areas of the city had their own red-light districts, and this system lasted well into the twentieth century.38 Much of what we know about prostitution in Singapore after 1860 comes from Warren’s research on the Chinese Ah ku and Japanese Karayuki san who worked in the city’s sex industry during the height of British regulationism be- tween 1864 and 1888 and the two world wars.39 In addition to the Ah ku and Japanese Karayuki san, Warren’s work also provides important insight into Singapore’s commercial sex trade and describes the environments of its east- ern and western sectors. The eastern district contained almost as many Eu- ropean prostitutes, and the “respectable colonial female population [was] living in nearby residential areas.”40 Since the colonial government main- tained a strict ban on British women working as prostitutes in its eastern colonies, most were poor women from central and eastern Europe, mainly from Hungary and Poland. There were some Russian Jewesses as well as a few
made by interpol in the 1970s brought the topic to the attention of the un again there have been consistent efforts to strengthen and enforce international anti-trafficking laws; Kathleen Barry, Female Sexual Slavery (New York, 1979), pp. 283–298. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Article 3, paragraph (a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons defines Trafficking in Persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of pay- ments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploita- tion of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or ser- vices, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs”; available at: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking.html; last accessed 8 July 2017. For a complete history see: Anne T. Gallagher, The International Law of Human Trafficking (Cambridge, 2010), pp. xxiii–34. 37 The following works are dedicated to this argument: Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Poli- tics and Howell, Geographies of Regulation. 38 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 34. 39 According to Warren, “Ah ku” was a respectable term for Chinese prostitutes in colonial Singapore; a Karayuki san in Singapore referred to “women from the poorest sectors of society during the Mejii-Taisho periods who lived and worked abroad as prostitutes.” War- ren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 3. 40 Ibid., p. 40.
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French and German women as well.41 Yet, according to Warren, European wom- en had a “notorious reputation” for being loud “foul-mouthed” street-walkers whose assumed privilege as “courtesans of a superior race” made them behave in a manner that appeared gross and vulgar to local authorities. In contrast, one colonial officer lauded the “quiet charm of the native women.”42 European women generally arrived with their souteneur, or pimp, who sold their “wares” to passers-by.43 They solicited from doorways and street corners; five or six girls worked in a brothel servicing a variety of clients, primarily British or other Europeans, in narrow cubicles. The demand for these women was created al- most entirely by European residents, merchants, or tourists visiting the port.44 Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, Chinese women formed the largest portion of sex workers in Singapore. Internal conflict, expansion of ex- ternal trade, poverty, and famine in China during the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries initiated a flow of Chinese into Southeast Asia who quickly established themselves as merchants, shopkeepers, and plantation owners, which provided an external boost to the Chinese economy.45 By the 1780s, there were at least 100,000 Chinese men working work in tin mines and on gambier plantations throughout Southeast Asia.46 At the same time, Chinese law prohibited the emigration of married Chinese women, so the mines and plantations were filled with a multitude of unattached men and very few women. However, wealthy merchants, and the Secret Societies to which they
41 Ibid. 42 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 40. Of course, there are layers of gender construction and British perceptions of prostitution, orientalism, and imperial categorization at work here, but the image is nonetheless vivid. For more on British perceptions of commercial sex, as well as discussions about the role of gender and Empire, see: Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 1–48; Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992), pp. 1–40; Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York, 1995), pp. 236–257; Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, pp. 22–79; Philippa Levine, Gender and Empire (Oxford, 2004), pp. 14–46, 134–156; Tony Bal- lantyne and Antoinette Burton (eds), Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Encounter in World History (Durham [etc.], 2005), pp. 1–19, 125–142. 43 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 88. 44 Ibid., p. 75. 45 Diana Lary, Chinese Migrations: The Movement of People, Goods, and Ideas over Four Millennia (Lanham, uk, 2012), pp. 92–94; Eric Tagliacozzo and Wen-Chin Chang (eds), Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia (Durham, 2014), pp. 24–27; Barbara Watson-Andaya and Leonard Andaya, A History of Malaysia (London, 1982), pp. 94–97. 46 Trocki, Prince of Pirates, p. 4.
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47 The following works discuss the importance and connections Chinese Secret Societies held within Southeast Asia: Andaya, A History of Malaysia, pp. 141–143; Trocki, Prince of Pirates, pp. 107–111; Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders, p. 372. 48 Herzog, “Convenient Compromises”, pp. 30–35. 49 British National Archives, Colonial Office [hereafter co] /273/91/75, “Appendix N”, “Ab- stract of Return of Brothels and Prostitutes of Singapore”, in “Governor of Straits Settle- ments to the Colonial Office”, 24 February 1869, pp. 75–77. 50 Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, p. 25. 51 Bill Mihalopoulos, “Ousting the ‘Prostitute’: Retelling the Story of the Karayuki–san”, Post- colonial Studies, 4 (2001), pp. 169–187, 173. 52 Ibid., p. 170. 53 Mikiso Hane, Peasants, Rebels, Women, and Outcasts: The Underside of Modern Japan ( Oxford, 1982), p. 12.
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Japanese communities in the Amakusa Islands, the Shimabara Peninsula, and Nagasaki. At the same time, newly developing colonies like Hong Kong and Singapore had a deficit of women and the promise of prosperity. Japan’s transi- tion to a money economy in the 1870s, and the falling price of rice in the 1880s, led to the bankruptcy and eviction of many farm families. As Hane explains, “in 1883 there were 33,845 such cases”; by 1885, 108,050 families were homeless and without a means to support themselves.54 According to government reports, in 1878 there were only two Japanese brothels open for business. However, by 1905, “37 years after the Meiji Resto- ration, and the year of the advent of the Russo-Japanese War”, there were 109 Japanese brothels and 633 Japanese prostitutes, or Karayuki san, registered in the colony.55 In 1906, Tanaka Tokichi, the Japanese consul in Singapore, argued that thousands of women were pouring into the city; he estimated that approx- imately twenty women each week arrived from Moji, Kuchinotsu, and Kobe with the intention to work as prostitutes. Fleeing desperation and violence, Karayuki san used what Mihalopoulos described as “subterranean economies” to make their way out of Japan.56 However, while some went with their par- ents’ permission (they likely received between 300 and 500 yen for a five-year contract), and with full knowledge that they would be working as prostitutes, Hane reminds us not to ignore the fact that many were, “sold into slavery or tricked into their situation through their sense of responsibility toward their poverty-stricken parents and siblings.”57 In fact, the parents and procurers of- ten prearranged the amount of money to be remitted to the family once the girls were sold and working. Local “procurers” (zegen), employment agencies, and third party brokers promised young girls “a better life overseas” and stabil- ity for their families.58 In some cases, former prostitutes at the end of their contracts returned to Japan and visited villages describing the luxury and suc- cess that awaited them. Unfortunately, as Mihalopoulos asserts, “the journey from Japan to Hong Kong or Singapore transformed the women into a basic
54 Ibid., p. 23. 55 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 47. 56 Mihalopoulos, “Ousting the ‘Prostitute’”, p. 177. 57 Ibid.; Hane, Peasants, Rebels, Women, and Outcasts, p. 207. According to Hane, the aver- age monthly income for peasants in 1878 was 1 yen 75 sen (there are 100 sen in a yen), and the situation did not improve until after the Second World War (p. 21). An average textile worker earned between 13 and 20 sen per day and “superior workers” saw an increase from 9 yen 22 sen per year in 1875, to 17 yen and 69 sen in 1881. A family could have a two-story home built for around 100 yen (p. 176). 58 Mihalopoulos, “Ousting the ‘Prostitute’”, p. 175.
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59 Ibid., p. 178. 60 Ibid., p. 177. 61 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 42. 62 Ibid., p. 47. 63 Ibid., p. 49. 64 Ibid., p. 51.
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The kwai po, who were at the top of the social hierarchy in Singapore’s com- mercial sex industry, managed brothels’ business affairs. The kwai po was re- sponsible for guarding the owner’s “property” and often policed the women mercilessly. This is the person who quantified the value of the women’s bod- ies and was often the liaison between prostitutes and local authorities. More than just brothel managers, kwai po were interpreters, bookkeepers, parental figures, debt-collectors, and prison guards for the girls working inside. In fact, the majority of women in these brothels were their “virtual prisoners” because working prostitutes were rarely able to pay off their compounding debts. As debtors enslaved in exchange for money given to them or their families, many prostitutes owed money for their passage in addition to loans they may have taken out; the kwai po added this debt to any personal costs above and beyond their room and board, which accumulated quickly.65 Moreover, if the kwai po learned that a woman planned to run away without paying her debt, she was often drugged, taken away, and sold to another brothel. Regardless of how much of her contract she may have already worked off, she incurred an en- tirely new debt and contract that she had to repay.66 Warren estimates that in the 1880s, “80 per cent of young Chinese girls brought to Singapore” worked in brothels within this system.67 Although it is clear that not all of these women were completely victimized, their “choices” were regularly shaped by poverty, famine, abuse, or neglect and the disposition of their kwai po. For some mi- grant women, prostitution could be a means to relatively lucrative employ- ment, but it regularly required a relinquishment of their personal rights. Chinese prostitutes in Singapore were generally ranked according to their financial relationship to the house; they were “sold”, “pawned”, or “voluntary.”68 The kongchu or “sold” women were particularly helpless; the kwai po purchased them from traffickers, so they were considered property of the brothel. These women were in essence “the adopted daughters” of the brothel owner.69 The house provided for the kongchu’s basic necessities but the kwai po retained all of their earnings. The pongnin, or those “pawned or hired to a house”, were prostitutes like the Karayuki san who were working off a debt.70 Indentured for
65 Adam McKeown discusses the lives of indentured labour in Singapore in his chapter, “The Social Life of Chinese Labour”, in Eric Taggliacozzo and Wen-Chin Chang, (eds), Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia (Durham, 2011), pp. 62– 83, 75–78. 66 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 55; McKeown, “The Social Life of Chinese Labour”, pp. 76–77. 67 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 91. 68 Ibid., p. 52. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid.
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71 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 52; Major, Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772–1843 (Liverpool, 2012), pp. 131–162. 72 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, pp. 52–67; Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, pp. 29–30. 73 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 61. All references to dollars in Warren’s work refer to contemporary Straits dollars. 74 Ibid. All currency conversions were performed with the British National Archive’s cur- rency converter available at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/default0 .asp#mid; last accessed 8 July 2017.
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Regulationism
In response to an epidemic of venereal diseases that began in the 1860s, the colonial government began legislative efforts to contain and regulate the com- mercial sex industry in the name of public health. The passage of Singapore’s local Contagious Disease Ordinance (cdo) in 1870 marked the beginning of Singapore’s enduring legislative struggle with the realities of a thriving com- mercial sex industry and the social, ethical, and political consequences of maintaining it. The colonial authorities had already created a system to cat- alogue the various brothels within their business registry in the 1850s. The cdo granted colonial officials the legal authority to interrogate, examine, and detain women known for or suspected of working as prostitutes. Initially, women and brothel owners throughout Singapore resisted and avoided the government’s system of examinations and detainment; but within a few years, incidences of disease diminished and prostitutes began going to their exami- nations voluntarily.76 Moreover, officials noticed a levelling off in the opening of new brothels. Many argued that regulationism was noticeably successful in reducing incidences of syphilis and gonorrhoea and it gave officials the author- ity to offer assistance to victims who had been trafficked or were being abused. Still, there was overwhelming evidence showing that in parts of England and in some British colonies there were officials who misused the authority granted by the cd Acts to terrorize middle- and working-class women.77 Consequently, anti-prostitution and anti-trafficking activists fought hard to abolish what they saw as a blatant exploitation of working women and girls, and in 1888 Parlia- ment repealed the imperial cdo.
75 Ibid., p. 63. 76 Yong Kiat Lee, “Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Early Singapore (1819–1889), Part ii”, Singapore Medical Journal, 21 (1980), pp. 781–791, 782. 77 For more on officials misusing authority granted by cd Acts, see Judith Walkowitz, Prosti- tution and Victorian Society, pp. 79–85.
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In spite of vocal objections by Singapore’s officials, residents, and the medical community, the colonial government—wary of public censure—ordered that mandatory registration and examination systems be dismantled and all women detained in lock hospitals be released. However, to mitigate the effects of the repeal, from 1889 to 1927, unbeknownst to the British public, Singapore’s of- ficials expanded the role and authority of the Chinese Protectorate through “legal measures pertaining to the Protection of Women and Girls Ordinance” to allow for the maintenance of an “extra-legal system of publicly recognized houses”.78 This period of “quasi-regulation” allowed the city to profit from brothels’ services through taxes and it gave local police the authority to close or tolerate a brothel at their discretion. An unofficial list contained the names of brothels and prostitutes regularly seen by private physicians and those not on the list were not allowed to operate. This system primarily focused on control- ling brothels, particularly the Japanese houses that serviced European clien- tele; but as Warren explains, in the Chinese brothels venereal diseases spread “as immigrant labour kept on increasing right up to the First World War.”79 In 1912, public scandal about “white slavery” made popular by Mrs. Archibald MacKirdy and W.N. Willis’ book, The White Slave Market, resulted in intense scrutiny of Singapore’s extra-legal system, forced officials to address the illegal trade in women and girls more seriously, and motivated officials to push the commercial sex industry out of public view.80 Anti-trafficking activ- ists quickly took notice of Singapore’s “tolerated houses” and began a vitriolic public campaign for their abolition.81 Exaggerating an already dismal situa- tion, abolitionists offered up public descriptions of miserable, drug-addicted European women who had been stolen from their homes and were in need of rescue. Even though European women were the minority in Singapore, the cam- paign focused on the trade’s degradation of “white European daughters”. Social reformers used every avenue at their disposal to bring attention to the fact that British officials had allowed Singapore’s authorities to tolerate the syst em of brothels, which were notoriously responsible for the sexual exploitation of women and girls. The political pressure eventually forced the Colonial Office
78 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, p. 147. 79 Ibid., p. 149. 80 Mrs. Archibald MacKirdy and W.N. Willis, The White Slave Trade (London, 1912). Warren discusses the impact this had on the British and Singaporean public: Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, pp. 151–158. For more on the reactions of the British public to regulationism, see: John F. Decker, Prostitution: Regulation and Control (New York, 1979); Paul McHugh, Prostitution and Victorian Social Reform (New York, 1980); Donald Thomas, The Victorian Underworld (New York, 1998). 81 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki San, pp. 154–156.
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82 Ibid., p. 155. 83 Ibid., pp. 157–165; Warren, Pirates, Prostitutes, and Pullers, pp. 240–247. 84 Regulationism and the effects of its repeal were part of a long and protracted debate in British Parliament. For more on this, see: Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics, pp. 37–145 and Howell, Geographies of Regulation, pp. 113–188. 85 Warren, Ah ku and Karayuki-San, p. 167.
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Postcolonial Singapore
The Second World War brought another influx of military battalions onto the island and generated a dramatic increase in the number of brothels, prosti- tutes, and yet another outbreak of venereal infections. This revitalization of the industry led Singapore’s authorities to once again rethink their policies on prostitution. Between 1930 and 1960, local officials changed their focus from abolition to containment in an effort to curb the spread of diseases and the abuse suffered by women working in illegal clubs and houses.88 Underground brothel prostitution had survived, and by the time Singapore gained its inde- pendence from British rule in 1959 and formed an independent government in 1963, the old colonial red-light districts thrived and serviced men from around the world. Regulations against maintaining brothels, soliciting, and zoning
86 Ibid., p. 175. 87 Ong, “Singapore”, p. 245. 88 Ibid., p. 246.
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ordinances, which quarantined the commercial sex sector in specific parts of the city, pushed Singapore’s sex trade out of public view but made way for a new extra-legal system that accommodated the persistent demand. This change initiated an entirely new organizational structure in Singapore’s sex market. The elimination of secret societies did remove much of the coercion that existed in brothels, and the availability of other work made prostitution— at least for local women—more of a personal choice than a last resort. Nev- ertheless, an underground trade in trafficked women and girls still exists in Singapore and authorities have been only minimally successful at suppressing it. The economic boom that occurred between 1970 and 1990 created another surge in demand in Singapore’s commercial sex trade. A recession in the 1980s brought a new supply of unskilled Malay women unable to find factory or manufacturing work, and women from rural India migrated to Singapore with their children and worked as prostitutes trying to support their families.89 In the urban centre, Chinese women are still the dominant ethnicity among Sin- gapore’s commercial sex workers. However, as Ong’s research demonstrates, an increase in construction, the result of an explosion in tourism in the 1990s, drew in increasing numbers of Korean and Thai prostitutes who made money following the pool of single men working in construction and providing servic- es at job sites.90 Still, the primary centres are the “Designated Red-Light Areas”, where in the 1990s women earned between $7 and $120 per client for a variety of sexual services.91 In spite of decades of legislation, there remains a teeming commercial sex market in Singapore. According to researchers Shyamala Nagaraj and Siti Rohani Yahya, since laws prohibit “the use of premises for prostitution, most legal establishments tend to observe the rules and to keep the business of com- mercial sex independent of their operations.”92 Their study, “Prostitution in Malaysia”, examines Singapore’s sex industry extensively as a part of the Malayan peninsula and describes the development of the “sex sector”.93 They illustrate the role Singapore’s sex sector plays as a central economic feature of the island. For example, the “freelancers” and “special workers” operate in dance halls,
89 Shyamala Nagaraj and Siti Rohani Yahya, “Prostitution in Malaysia”, in Lin Lean Lim (ed.), The Sex Sector: the Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia (Geneva, 1998), pp. 67–99, 70–73. 90 Ong, “Singapore”, p. 257. 91 Ibid. 92 Nagaraj and Yahya, “Prostitution in Malaysia”, p. 76; the amounts in Nagaraj and Yahya’s study are given in contemporary us dollars. 93 Ibid.
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94 Ibid. 95 Nagaraj and Yahya, “Prostitution in Malaysia”, p. 78. 96 Ibid., p. 79. 97 Ibid., p. 84.
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98 Ibid. 99 Nagaraj and Yahya, “Prostitution in Malaysia”, p. 90. 100 Paul Fitzpatrick, “Into the Red Light: Prostitution in Singapore”, Singapore Business Re- view, 20 July 2012; available at: http://sbr.com.sg/leisure-entertainment/commentary/red -light-prostitution-in-singapore; last accessed 8 July 2017. The following articles de- scribe two separate scandals about officials and public figures purchasing underage women for sexual services: Cheryl Ong and Jalelah Abu Baker, “In Singapore Clients will Face Charges if Prostitutes are Under the Age of 18”, Straits Times Indonesia, 13 February 2012, available at: http://jakartaglobe.id/archive/in-singapore-clients-will- face-charges-if-prostitutes-the-under-age-of-18/; last accessed 30 June 2017; Sanat Valilikappen and Andrea Tan, “Singapore Charges 48 in Underage Prostitution Scan- dal”, Bloomberg, 18 April 2012; available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012 -04-18/singapore-charges-48-in-underage-prostitution-scandal.html; last accessed 21 May 2012.
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Conclusion
Singapore’s sex industry developed, expanded, and fluctuated according to his- torical waves of unattached merchants, labourers, soldiers, and businessmen
101 Fitzpatrick, “Into the Red Light: Prostitution in Singapore”. 102 Ibid. 103 Ong and Baker, “In Singapore Clients will Face Charges”.
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104 Reid, “The Decline of Slavery in Indonesia”, p. 72.
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