Prostitution also occurred on a wide scale in nineteenth-century Southeast Asia. Immigrant laborers were brought in to work the colonial mines and plantations; as regional ports grew in size and complexity, women were also trafficked to the region to "serve" immigrant labor. Ah Ku (Chinese prostitutes) and Karayuki-san (Japanese prostitutes) made up the majority of these women. They came to Southeast Asia in the bellies of colonial steamers, as well as in junks and other traditional sailing craft. Most of these women never returned to their homelands; the burden of cultural "shame" and their poverty exiled them to the region for the rest of their days.

Books

James Francis Warren,
Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: A History of Prostitution in Singapore, 1870-1940,
Singapore: Oxford U.P., 1993.

James Warren's Ah Ku and Karayuki-san recounted for the first time the important history of colonial prostitution in England's Straits Settlements, the capital of which was Singapore. Chinese women and girls (Ah Ku) and their Japanese counterparts (Karayuki-san) were transited down to colonial SE Asia in junks and in tramp steamers. The women led difficult lives far from home. Though many remitted money back to Northeast Asia, many more lived in debt and often poverty, never returning to the lands of their birth.