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Our newsletter hand-delivers the best bits to your inbox. Sign up to unlock our digital magazines and also receive the latest news, events, offers and partner promotions. Author Wesley Leon Aroozoo introduces us to the lesser-known history of Japanese prostitutes in early Singapore.
But peel back the layers of Singapore's rich history and one is bound to meet prostitutes, convicts and other forgotten characters who are just as much a part of our national fabric. In his research, he stumbled across the stories of the Karayuki-san, Japanese girls and women in the 19th and 20th centuries who were ripped from poor agricultural provinces in Japan and sold into the flesh trade all over the world — Britain, Australia, East Asia and Southeast Asia among others.
The result of this drive is his latest book The Punkhawala and The Prostitute , where he explores and reimagines the lives of the Karayuki-san. A finalist in the Epigram Books Fiction Prize, the book follows two forgotten and destitute souls, the young karayuki Oseki and an Indian convict Gobind. Forced by fate and circumstance into lives of servitude in Singapore, they begin a journey of healing when their paths cross.
Evidence of the Karayuki-sans' lives still lurk in corners of Singapore, some papered over and cleaned up in the name of development. Here, Wesley takes us through these familiar places and introduces us to its unfamiliar histories.
