I just read about this. Females between the ages of 8 and 12 were often sent to brothels by their family. They were stuck there until they paid their debt, someone bought them out, or they died.
Boys from 10-18 were sent to kabuki troops which did prostitution on the side, or male brothels during that age span. A span of service was around 10 years.
As far as people felt about it we can only truly imagine how they felt and point of view without speaking to them,but I imagine depending on the person they wouldn't want to send a child off. Maybe they felt it was better than starving to death. A majority of the prostitutes were peasants and very poor. I'm sure they hoped for a better life and chance at freedom later despite what they may have to go through, or maybe they felt relieved of at burden.
It was not a time of therispists and safe spaces. People also deal with trauma and difficulties differently. Some let it hang on there shoulders like lead weights. Others may try to put it past them, or bottle it up, maybe they decide to end it all. It seems like fortunately for momo he found someone to be by his side and to love.
Not reading through it again and going off what my initial thoughts were about the brother was the that he would have rather it been him to put momo through
grooming rather than someone else who could potentially be rough since he loved his brother as a brother, but momo developed feelings of love for him. I dunno, I'll have to read through that part again.
Just remember that the time setting is much different than now, and be thankful to live in the time we do. where people want to protect children from such circumstances, and laws are in place to help with that. We also have better understanding of how to help people who have experienced trauma.
And how sad that variations of that still occur:
In recent decades, he says, this impoverished fishing village – where a daughter's virginity is too often seen as a valuable asset for the family – has become a notorious child sex hotspot.
"When we came here three years ago and began to live here, 100% of the kids between 8 and 12 were being trafficked," says Brewster. The local sex industry sweeps up both children from the neighborhood -- sold, like Kieu, by their parents – as well as children trafficked in from the countryside, or across the border from Vietnam. "We didn't believe it until we saw vanload after vanload of kids."
from http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/12/world/cambodia-child-sex-trade/
Mother's Sephat "If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't do that to my daughter." Oh, no, you didnt knew right? When you sell your virginity's daughter you thought what? All those mothers trying to seem pitiful. I know poverty force people to face a very hard world but sell your kid to a rapist....sell yourself, sell your organs, bitch, I would never do that, also they see that like normal, many think that is OK! So sad, Im so sad. I know this happens still nowdays but reading testimonies like this make me si angry. My admiration to people like Brewster who tey to change this horrific world and I dont believe in heaven but I hope there were a hell where those pederasts, rapist, sellers who profit with the torment of others rut and suffer forever.
You have to consider that 1818-1830 for Japan was still quite the same as European middle age. They opened up after WW2, so children where not considered children anymore probably after the age of 12 at most. We now have a life of about 80 years, if not more, but that is thanks to antibiotics and such, in Europe at the beginning of 1800 lifetime was between 25 and 35 at most with tons of children under 10 dying due to ilnesses. Think about Japan, without the industry and such. You had to consider a kid no longer a child after 10, so they could help you work. All this to say that 12 years old were, most likely, not children anymore.
(sotty for grammar/spelling mistakes)
Not just Japan. Child laborers were in the US and Europe in the same time period you state, and even later in the 19th century and early 20th century. Poverty makes for necessity, especially in times and places without ANY safety nets from the gov't and laws not requiring education instead of labor. But if it's a question of starving or child labor, one understands the desperation. And I do see a big difference between working in fields, in factories, in stores, in homes compared to being sold off so perverts can rape a kid over and over and over.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/images/schuman1-fig1.png
Its quite a difference between having your children work in labor and selling them to get fucked by pervers. Its not the same. Btw in the 19th century in the slums of London children were prostituted too as a usual thing. But if you had read the article you should have read that mother who, when they go to question her they found her sitting in front of a tv surounded by belongings not usual for the people who live there and she didnt think as it as a big deal what she did to her daughter. So is not just a poverty problem, the emphathy factor is there too. It seemed that in Southeast Asia has normalized the child prostituton in a extreme way and govertments are getting profits for that. And western govertments arent doing anything to change that either, and USA or France for example had their role in the poverty these countries are in now. Well, they dont have petroleum so whi cares.
In this age there is children who are sold as prostitutes, syrians refugees both women and kids are being sold in the surrounding countries. If this topic hits you so hard, then it's still common and it's happening... also kds abused by their relatives etc... it exists
I’m about to post my opinions, so beware (you have been warned):
I wish that someone tagged this as a “shotacon” before I started reading it. I get that it was only for a few chapters, but I feel that those specific scenes were crucial to understanding the story (and since I had already started reading, I didn’t want to quit in the middle... no matter how unsettling it was).
If you couldn’t already tell. Shota is NOT my thing. But anyways,
I feel like this is actually a really sad and heavy story. The way that they make everything light and positive until you hit those chapters tainted everything.
I’m genuinely curious, (and I know this is probably gonna sound really ignorant) but was child prostitution common in Japan at that time? Everyone seemed so lax about it...
It’s just sad because we all know what horrible crime it is. And also the effects that it can have on the poor children. Even in western news right now, child actors are coming out with their rape/molestation stories. And there are so many who have OD because of the trauma. The fact that Momo seems so “happy” even though he has gone through it, (without therapy, confronting his abusers, or anything) seems unrealistic and disturbing. Maybe, the only realistic thing was his attachment to his “brother”, because that’s what grooming does. How disturbed is he, to where sexual acts are just accepted and he still holds affection for his abuser?