Japan criticized for kiddie porn policing of Internet child pornography
todd_...@my-dejanews.com
By Yuri Kageyama / Associated Press
TOKYO -- Hundreds of pornographic images of children flood Internet sites
with addresses ending in "jp." It's a tip-off that they originate in Japan
-- and that there is basically nothing officials can do about it. With no
laws explicitly banning child pornography, Japan has acquired the dubious
distinction of being the global leader in the fast-growing Internet child
pornography business. Japanese police say there are about 1,200 commercial
child pornography Internet sites in Japan. Some feature photos of children
from Japan, others of Southeast Asian children. Keiji Goto, a senior
official at the National Police Agency, said police are frustrated by cases
in which they identified the source of a pornographic site but were unable
to take further action. Because Japan has no law on child porn, officers
must apply the general criminal code on pornography -- which is vaguely
worded, but defined in practice as including material depicting sexual
organs. Most child porn sites skirt that law by using images that show
abuse or torture of children without directly showing sexual organs. A bill
to outlaw child pornography, on and off the Internet, was submitted to
Parliament earlier this year, backed almost entirely by female legislators.
But the bill has not made it onto Parliament's agenda and is not likely to
come up for consideration soon....
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Interpol ties 80% of world's child pornography to
Japan
By KAORUKO SUNAZAWA
Asahi Evening News 4 Dec 98
"Interpol, the international police organization,
estimates that 80 percent of the world's
commercial child pornography materials found on
the Internet are suspected to be produced or
distributed from Japan."
I don't have the cite on me, but in the past, the
head of one of the UN's child's rights think tanks,
a Japanese, also identified Japan as the world's
leading source of child porn due to its lax laws.
It's easy to find on the streets, too. Even the
Fujisan supermarket chain, convenience stores
like 7-11, or Keibunsha bookstore chain carry
magazines or photo collections featuring even
preteen girls in scanty clothing, provocative
poses or erotic situations.
Eric Takabayashi
Fukuyama, Japan
Dave
> By KAORUKO SUNAZAWA
>
> Asahi Evening News 4 Dec 98
>
> "snip"
>
> snip.
>
> It's easy to find on the streets, too. Even the
> Fujisan supermarket chain, convenience stores
> like 7-11, or Keibunsha bookstore chain carry
> magazines or photo collections featuring even
> preteen girls in scanty clothing, provocative
> poses or erotic situations.
I'm completely miffed by this.I've heard this from time to time,
that some Japanese men have an obsession with very young girls.
What is the attraction?
From a distance you would be hard pressed to pick a young girl from a young
boy.
It seems pretty sick to me, being attracted to children so young and
underdeveloped.
How widespread is this? Is it frowned upon?
--
from Dave
et...@fkym.daiichi-net.or.jp
> I'm completely miffed by this.I've heard this from time to time,
> that some Japanese men have an obsession with very young girls.
Time to time? Some? Hear the situation from this
MILD article before sex with a minor for money
was criminalized (ha ha) last year:
"Sex exploitation for kids targeted: but fighting
indifference said key to aintichild-porn bill"
Japan Times (Reuters), Tue. 25 Feb 97 p. 3:
Sumiko Shimizu, member of the Lower House of
the Diet: "The popularity of telephone clubs,
where schoolgirls contact customers for sex, and
the high incidence of schoolgirl prostitution in
Japan is a big social problem . . . which goes hand
in hand with the issue of the sexual exploitation of
children."
The reporter writes: "Recent media reports have
zeroed in on telephone clubs, in which girls
around 13 to 15 years old have told of mainly
middle-aged men.
"The teenagers have sex with the clients so they
can buy brand-name clothes and accessories.
"One of the most disturbing features of the
phenomenon is the premium younger girls fetch
from 'lolicon' clients - older men with Lolita
complexes for little girls."
["Premium," as in, the media had no shortage of
girls saying to reporters or news cameras that
men might give them about a thousand bucks and a
shopping spree into the thousands of dollars for a
single "date." I've also read of girls who said they
were like kept women for certain individuals, for
a few thousand bucks a month. They did it
willingly.]
"One of the disturbing features . . . " Yeah, as if
"normal" men deliberately going for underage
girls, or children willingly whoring themselves
for material possessions in the first place is not a
problem.
Now that underage whoring is technically illegal
(though not eliminated, as publicized arrests
show - even schoolteachers get arrested and outed
in the news), it is interesting to note how many
FEWER young women and children are walking
around with those $3,000 Chanel or Gucci bags or
head to toe coordinated designer outfits. Poor
whore babies. Haven't seen them in appreciable
numbers for at least a year. Used to be able to trip
over them in a city like Hiroshima.
Now that Japanese men can't legally buy underage
girls, what is a poor pedophile or child molester
to do? Maybe they're just going overseas. Same
article: "Recent years have seen Japanese
nationals on trial in child-sex cases in Thailand
and the Philippines, crystalizing an image of
Japanese visitors seeking sex with children."
UNICEF's Japan representative, Akihiro Hagio:
"Japanese tourists have a very bad name. Anyone
who goes to Southeast Asia can see that." Then
there are the child rape/abduction/murder cases
in the news.
Or go to a bookstore and open up a magazine
catering to those with tendencies towards
pedophilia. Cream, Momo Cream, Waffle, Crepu,
Beppin School, Zuppin, Don't!, Alice, Alice Club,
Houkago Club, etc., etc. They still recommend
shops by name, address and telephone number,
where one may still purchase girls' used school
uniforms or underwear. They still advertise the
undersized love dolls and hardcore videos by mail
order. Heck, I've seen them advertised on network
tv on "Tonight 2." Telephone clubs and teenage
prostitutes of course still exist.
Or you can just to any soapland, health, pink
salon, cabaret club, hostess bar, or any other
perfectly legal establishment to have a go at the
many new girls right out of high school. Legal
girls in the sex trade can still can pull down many
times more than the average office worker. Help
wanteds in my newspaper and women interviewed
on tv claim they can SAVE even say, $8,000 a
single month, or get nearly $400 a single DAY. (A
male university grad at a corporation might
START at about $2,000 a month.) The employer
may even give the girls places to live, even new
four room apartments for each girl. "Housewives
welcome." "Office ladies (who want to 'work') on
the way home from work welcome," say the ads.
Mainstream network broadcast television shows
like the nightly "Tonight 2" will tell you just
where to go, and what they can do for you. The
weekly "HamaSho" or "KenJin" interview
individual girls. "Gilgamesh Night," a show hosted
by real live adult video stars, which turned
Iijima Ai into a legit star, has unfortunately been
canceled. There are a handful of Japanese
magazines which specialize in reviewing the sex
trade, like Night Walker or Otoko no Asobi.
If you just like to watch, try any teen idol show on
network tv like the nightly "Wonderful" or
weekly "Miniskirt Police" or "BiKiNi," to see the
freshest up and coming young girls (down to 12)
showing skin to promote their appearances in
magazines, video, photo collections and on tv.
"BiKiNi" in particular, features about 20
regulars, famous for their breast sizes, who
always wear bikinis while in the studio or on the
beach. Girls who are TOO OLD, like 19 year old
Yoshida Satomi or 18 year old Anzai Hiroko, must
"graduate" and leave the show. The show is hosted
by Yamada Mariya, now a legit star at 18, who
pointedly dresses in long sleeved outfits that
cover her up to her neck, as if to separate herself
from the other girls who can't get by on ability or
personality.
Hell, watch practically ANY Japanese variety
show, music show, game show, trendy drama, or
commercial, or look on the cover or inside of a
magazine to see teenage girls making money off
their freshness or sex appeal. It's perfectly
normal.
> What is the attraction?
It seems nature has determined girls after
puberty are fair game, biologically speaking. The
age of concent in Japan is now 16. As for why men
go for children, I'm afraid I don't understand the
minds of pedophiles or child molesters. Kill them.
> How widespread is this? Is it frowned upon?
It is now illegal to buy the services of a live girl
under 18. But like I said, it is not hard to find
teen erotica out in the open at a mainstream
vendor. Supermarkets, convenience stores,
bookstores, video shops, etc., etc. Walking
distance, anywhere I have looked. "There is
absolutely no legislation against this kind of
pornography here . . . not against the production,
sale or possession of it." - Shiro Yoshioka, an
activist against child prostitution, from the same
article. Young girls in underwear or bathing suits
or in simulated erotic situations and poses can be
found nearly anywhere. Today is Tuesday. "Tonight
2" and "Wonderful" are on at midnight. "BiKiNi"
and "Miniskirt Police" are on about one and one
thirty a.m. respectively.
Japanese women's advocates of course disapprove
of porn in general. They and the PTA, for example,
have been battling pornography since the 1950s,
reportedly aided by postwar liberal Christianized
female legislators. Gee, how bad must it have been
back then, you may wonder? Well, girls could
legally work in soaplands when they were called
"turkish baths" as recently as the 70s, if I recall.
--
et...@fkym.daiichi-net.or.jp
Japanese scandals and crimes, committed by
Japanese. No bad gaijin.
See it while you can. From the daily online Asahi
Evening News:
http://www.asahi.com/english/enews/
enews.html#enews_18628
Sexual exploitation: The gravest infringement
against children's rights
By SACHIKO NAKAGOME
Asahi Evening News, Thu 10 Dec 98
Sexual exploitation of children is a form of
slavery and the gravest infringement of a child's
rights, a joint statement issued after UNICEF's
Global Forum in Tokyo reaffirmed.
More than 1 million children enter the sex trade
each year, according to ECPAT International (End
Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking in
Asia), a coalition of agencies and individuals
seeking to prevent the global sexual exploitation
of children.
Although Asian nations such as Thailand and the
Philippines have enacted domestic laws to punish
adults who sexually exploit children, the
measures cannot eradicate all the problems
because many crimes are committed by foreign
tourists, ECPAT reports.
For example, 300,000 Japanese take sex tours to
the Philippines every year, according to CASPAR
(Campaign to Stop Prostitution). The forum was
held Dec. 4-5 and included a workshop and
symposium. It followed the 1996 World Congress
Against Commercial Exploitation of Children held
in Stockholm, in which 122 participating nations
agreed to come up with action plans by 2000.
Twenty nations have submitted their plans so far,
but Japan has yet to devise one.
. . . . .
Laws in Australia, Denmark, France, Germany,
Norway, Sweden, and the United States penalize
their citizens who commit sex crimes against
children outside their countries.
Muntabhorn then criticized Japan's current laws
as being "hampered with loopholes" and called for
revisions.
For example, Japanese law requires victims of
sexual abuse to report the cases to authorities
within six months of the crime.
But a 10-year-old girl in Thailand would not
know of such a law, and would have no access to
Japanese authorities, Muntabhorn said.
He also cites a general lack of regulation on kiddie
pornography and child cyber pornography. Japan
has no laws against taking pictures of naked
children or possessing such images. Investigators
can only arrest suspects when there is evidence
that children have been sexually abused.
Muntabhorn also cited the need for Japan to raise
the age of protection above the current maximum
age for statutory rape, which is 13.
Muntabhorn also cited a lack of monitoring
systems of sex offenders and police training in
dealing with child victims.
[end]
From the same site:
Loopholes in Japanese law permit child cyber
pornography
By SACHIKO NAKAGOME
Asahi Evening News
Children are raped, tortured to the verge of death,
and even killed during the production process of
pornographic pictures and video clips. These
atrocities can be witnessed by millions through
the Internet. ECPAT estimates that 60 to 80
percent of all pornographic images of children are
distributed from Japan.
At a special session on child cyber pornography
held during the Global Forum workshop,
participants discussed how Japan can regulate
such activities.
First of all, unlike other advanced nations, the
possession of child pornography here is not
illegal.
A simultaneous international raid on pedophiles
carried out by Interpol, the International
Criminal Police Organization, led to the arrests of
50 suspected pedophiles in Europe and the United
States.
These arrests were only possible because the
nations involved had laws penalizing those
possessing child pornography, Muntabhorn said.
Although Japanese laws prohibit the production
and distribution of child pornography, it is very
difficult to prove, National Police Agency official
Keiji Goto said at the workshop.
Goto estimates that in December 1997, there
were about 3,000 Internet sites in Japan selling
pornographic images online. Popular sites have
been visited 3 million to 4 million times, he said.
. . . . .
Goto also said the lack of cooperation between law
enforcement officials and Internet service
providers is an obstacle in the crackdown on child
pornography.
. . . . .
Muntabhorn also called for tougher standards in
Japanese laws such as incriminating the depiction
of child pornography as well.
Depictions of children engaged in sexual acts are
just as harmful as actual child pornography, he
said. These include pseudo pornography, in which
adults wear clothes that make them look like high
school students, or children's faces are placed on
adult bodies through computer manipulation.
Muntabhorn called such depictions a
"dehumanizing process that degrades all children"
and said "it lends itself to abuse" because it tends
to justify sexual abuse of children.
. . . . .
[end]