Of the many women living in this world, some have risen to be mama-san, female proprietors of a bar or similar establishment, who run a couple of girls of their own.
One mama-san says in the film: "In a way, it's like we were sent to Japan to serve in the military draft. Taiwanese men take two years to finish, but for us here, it took 20 years. And this is voluntary draft, and there is no retirement."
Looking back 20 years, it's not difficult to find on reports about the wave of Taiwanese prostitutes working in Japan.
An AFP report from March 1980 was one of the first to report on Taiwanese bar girls in Tokyo. It reported the rise in illegal female workers from Taiwan, most of whom where taking jobs as bar girls or strippers. The report cited statistics from Japan's immigration bureau, saying out of the 557 illegal foreign female workers arrested in 1979, 384 were from Taiwan.
According to a United Daily News report the following month (April 1980), the AFP report so shocked the Taiwanese public that the matter was raised by then premier Chiang ching-kuo (
Taiwan had lifted its ban on overseas travel for citizens in 1979. This move opened the floodgates and waves of Taiwanese women headed to Japan to dig for gold in Japan's red-light districts.
News reports on Taiwanese prostitution in Japan became frequent in Taiwan's Chinese-language press, often in the society pages and often related to murder or robbery.
Every month, the police reportedly arrested hundreds of women, travel agents and brokers involved in this trade. Travel agents would often provide fake papers for the women to make them eligible for business visas, allowing a longer stay in Japan.
A Helping hand
Someone Else's Shinjuku East was screened at the 2003 Taipei Film Festival and audience response was strong, as many people were unaware of this chapter in Taiwan's history. Yang and Chu found very little documentation on this group of women when they were doing research for the film.
Wang Fang-Ping (王芳萍), a labor activist from the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (日日春關懷互助協會), pointed out that such groups are easily overlooked even on research focusing on the conditions of sex workers.
"We are excited to see the launch of the film. These women are Taiwan's first group of migrant workers. Like the Filipino and Indonesian workers now in Taiwan ... their journey traces the course of globalization. They are actually the vanguard of globalization," said Wang.
Masato (who declined to give his last name) from the Tokyo Sex Worker Movement, said foreign sex workers are much harder to reach. They easily become the most powerless of groups.
"Shinjuku's Kabuki Cho is basically an underworld. It's already hard to reach sex workers and give them assistance," Masato said. "But for foreign sex workers, they are an underground part of the underworld."
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