By For those that didn’t know, child porn is a big industry in Japan that is perfectly legal to possess:
Tokyo – Faced with mounting foreign and domestic pressure, Japan’s government has been forced to rethink how to handle the country’s huge market in child pornography, raising hopes for an overdue ban on possession.
While it is illegal to produce or distribute child pornography in Japan, possessing it is not – an anomaly Japan shares with only one other G8 nation, Russia. The release last month of national police agency figures showing a dramatic rise in the number of known child pornography cases coincides with new calls for the government to take action. Yet, say campaigners, national legislators lack the political will to change the law.
Investigators took action in 1,342 cases in 2010, the police agency said, a rise of 43.5 percent from the previous year. The number of reported child pornography victims, meanwhile, rose to 618, an increase of more than 52 percent from 2009 – a new record since that type of data was first compiled in 2000.
The existing law has effectively encouraged the growth of a lucrative market in sexually explicit images of children, ranging from manga comics to animated movies and, at the most dissolute end of the spectrum, films of children being subjected to rape, torture, and other crimes. [Christian Science Monitor]
Read the rest at the link, but powerful publishers in Japan are supposedly behind the effort to prevent possession of child porn from becoming illegal in Japan.
9:46 pm on March 4th, 2011 1
I've read many Japanese commenting that these cartoons are art and that some of them are even considered to be national treasure yada yada. They say most buyers are buying it for the story and that the people buying it never gratify themselves while reading it.
I'm not too surprised by them. Nanjing never happened or at least the figures are all wrong, Whales are caught for scientific purposes, colonial rule was good for Korea, comfort women never existed etc.
A Brit designer gets arrested and fired from his job 'cause he shouts "I love Hitler." in a bar while drunk. Everything he has worked for and accomplished goes down the drain while Japan practically goes and worships the war criminals of ww2. Geez.
11:46 pm on March 4th, 2011 2
like devmil said… :-X
11:52 pm on March 4th, 2011 3
No more used schoolgirl panties in vending machines? Perish the thought!
3:28 am on March 5th, 2011 4
Liz, you crack me up
5:28 am on March 5th, 2011 5
What about Hello Kitty Porn?
10:08 am on March 5th, 2011 6
Don't forget the tentacles!
3:07 pm on March 5th, 2011 7
Anyone who would sexually harm a child should be publicly castrated. Then show it on the 6 o'clock news.
9:34 pm on March 5th, 2011 8
I have a funny feeling this is about all the hentai being produced depicting underage girls. Funny that the article is speaking about cp but is actually attacking animated depictions of sex, something that has a pretty complex interpretation in the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_cart…
It has to pass the miller obscenity test and even then is random on what the outcome will be. As distasteful as it is, it does skirt the line of legalized morality.
10:36 pm on March 5th, 2011 9
It skirts the line? Well played sir.
Ah yes. The infamous Three Prong Obscenity Test.
No one knows what tentacle pr0n is but we know it if we see it.
11:14 pm on March 5th, 2011 10
According to Wikipedia,
"Currently, countries that have made it illegal to possess (or create/distribute) sexual images of fictional characters who are described as or appear to be under eighteen years old include Canada, South Africa, Sweden and the Philippines"
So, the Philippines is in an exclusive club of countries that are "tough on animation".
I wonder if it will be missed…
…ya know…
…being that for the same price as a good Japanese lolicon, one can get a REAL under-18 girl, dress her up any way one wants, and do anything one can imagine with her.
Wait a minute? I can? What the hell am I doing here?
8:05 am on March 6th, 2011 11
"So, the Philippines is in an exclusive club of countries that are “tough on animation”.
I wonder if it will be missed…
…ya know…
…being that for the same price as a good Japanese lolicon, one can get a REAL under-18 girl, dress her up any way one wants, and do anything one can imagine with her.
Wait a minute? I can? What the hell am I doing here?"
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Come on down! The club is extremely exclusive and the possibilities are endless!
What are you doing in S. Korea and why? You should see the costume shops lined up in the strip malls. School girl uniforms, Nurses uniforms, latex in all colors, cotton lace (hand made optional), police officer uniforms (my personal favorite), tiger prints etc.
P.S. Any law with respect to animation is missed. It seems almost all law is missing.
11:03 pm on March 6th, 2011 12
@9,
I only say skirts because there does exist an argument about animated depictions might influence people to actually do something. Same argument used to regulate violent games / movies and so forth. Don't agree with it but it does exist.
5:50 am on March 7th, 2011 13
Then it seems to me they are trying to change something that has become fundamental in modern Japan. The schoolgirl fetish has already crossed over into the mainstream Japanese identity.
Gogo Yubari, the Japanese bodyguard chic on Kill Bill wasn't all that cute, but Tarantino knew that the schoolgirl uniform and look would give her that extra something.
Would the redefinitions of child porn someday ban that too?
10:41 pm on March 8th, 2011 14
I've seen recommendations go along the lines of banning any depiction of underage sex or the pretense of being underage even if the individuals involved are legally adults. Think some 18 or 19yo chick dressing up as a school girl, that kind of stuff. It starts to go down the slippery slope of "thought crimes" where it becomes illegal to think an idea or encourage others to think an idea.