Your contributions will help us continue to deliver the stories that are important to you. Japan in joined other major developed nations and criminalised the possession of child pornography following calls by campaigners who complained it was a major international source of such material. Before the changes came into effect last year, it was the only Group of Seven nation in which the possession of sexualised images or videos of people under 18 remained legal.
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TOKYO (8 a.m.)
Manga artists and anime directors have argued that it is dangerous to try to define child pornography when it comes to artwork , drawings , and animation when regarding hentai due to it being highly ambiguous , and have cited freedom of expression to prevent it from being abused. For example, they argued that even in the anime and manga series Doraemon , the scene of the schoolgirl Shizuka Minamoto taking a bath might be mis-construed as "child pornography". Under Article 7, it outlawed the production, transport, import and export of child pornography, as well as possession of child pornography for the aforementioned purposes. Previously, obscenity was regulated by the Penal Code of Japan. Article of the code has been applied to underage obscenity, notably in a case where a burusera shop owner was arrested on suspicion of possession for sale of obscene media, after he had invited a high school student to appear in a pornographic video. Article 34 of the Child Welfare Act, applicable since , states that " No person shall commit an act listed in any of the following items: " with line six specifying " Cause a child to commit an obscene act ". However, there were no laws addressing the simple possession of any kind of pornography in general which included child pornography, with no intent to sale or distribute. On 4 June , a bill was approved to be passed to ban the possession, closing this loophole in the nation's child pornography prohibition law, although it did not apply to hentai in anime and manga in order to prevent abuse of the law. In June , a bill proposing a ban on child pornography possession was submitted to the House of Representatives of Japan , where it was brought before the Diet in September, but failed to pass. During the general election of the House of Representatives in August , open letters written by politicians to a civilian organization showed that the politicians were divided on the matter.
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Censorship in Japan , although prohibited by the country's constitution , is effectively mandated through the Article of the Criminal Code of Japan with regards to obscene material. While Article 21 of the Japanese Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and prohibits formal censorship , effective censorship of obscene content does exist and is justified by the Article of the Criminal Code of Japan. Historically the law has been interpreted in different ways—recently it has been interpreted to mean that all pornography must be at least partly censored; however, there have been very few arrests based on this law. As publishing became more popular in the Edo Period , the Tokugawa shogunate began to turn to censorship. During this period, the shogunate, or military government, had a constant policy to censor anything deemed as indecent by the government. Initial targets included Christianity , criticism of the shogunate, and information on the activities of the Tokugawa clan. With the Kansei Reforms , any material deemed to be disturbing the traditional way of life, as well as luxury publications, came under scrutiny.
Makoto Ibusuki Associate Prof. The purpose of this paper is to discuss various issues regarding pornography on the Internet in Japan. Internet pornography, in Japan, is considered as being an obscene image on the Internet. We will begin by focussing on the legal definition and aspects of obscenity in Japan. Then we will briefly describe the first Internet cyber-porn case in Japanese legal history. Finally, we will discuss the current on going legal debate that deals with dissemination of obscene material over the Internet.
