In chapter 3, Garon articulates the complexity of the state-society relations regarding the regulation of the licensed prostitution from the Meiji period to 1945 arguing that many scholars simplified the state-society relations. He states the origin of prostitution as a legitimate response to poverty and justified as a part of filial obligation in Japan and explains the debates over the abolition of the licensed prostitution between the protestant abolitionists and the regulationists. The protestant abolitionists argued that the prostitution causes moral degradation and also destroys the value of chastity and marriage, on the other hand, the regulationists stressed the necessity of the prostitutes arguing that the new type of men who were produced
