BBC asks “Why hasn’t Japan banned child-porn comics?”

The BBC has weighed in on the whole “Is-manga-child-porn?” argument with an online article and radio show with the balanced headline: “Why hasn’t Japan banned child-porn comics?”?

James Fletcher reports from Tokyo on this now slightly tired issue.

Posters of elfin-faced, doe-eyed cartoon heroines, many of them scantily clad and impossibly proportioned, turn the cavernous space into a riot of colour.

We stop at one table where the covers on display feature two topless girls. To my eyes they look to be in their early or pre-teens, and the stories show them engaged in explicit sexual acts.

Several other stands are selling similar material. It would certainly be considered controversial, and possibly illegal, in the UK, Australia or Canada, but here it’s no big deal.

He quotes an organizer of a manga event: “Everyone knows that child abuse is not a good thing… But having that kind of emotion is free, enjoying imagining some sexual situation with a child is not prohibited.”

The reporter then learns about Lolicon, apparently for the first time.

Of course, the “pervert” who loves Lolicon has a wife who “loves young boys sexually interacting with each other”. The BBC hammers home the Japan-is-wacky myth again.

To be fair, they make it clear that they are talking about a “tiny part” of manga and anime.

Last year it finally became illegal to possess images of child sex abuse in Japan, though produces and distributing them has been illegal since the late 1990’s.

Tokyo government notoriously also tried to ban “virtual” images too by revising the current city law to include “non-existent youths” (非実在青少年 hijitsuzai seishonen). Thankfully, Shintaro Ishihara was defeated by the Assembly and that part of the revision was rejected.

The BBC speaks to a few people, even a girl who works the counter at a manga store selling adult content.

They even interview Dan Kanemitsu: “I’m not comfortable with [manga depicting child abuse], but it is not my right to tell people how they think or what they want to share,” he says. “As long as it doesn’t infringe upon people’s human rights, what’s wrong with having a fantasy life?”

Kanemitsu wrote a long, logical argument against the revision of the Tokyo law: “A culture grows richer through addition, not by subtraction.”

The BBC then ventures into the world of junior idol porn.

Among the manga shops of Akihabara, child protection campaigner Kazuna Kanajiri takes me to see something she thinks is a much bigger problem than cartoons and comics. We climb a flight of stairs off the main street and emerge into a room packed full of DVDs.

Kazuna picks one off the shelf — it features real images of a girl she says is five years old, wearing a skimpy swimsuit and posing in sexually suggestive positions that mimic adult pornography. All the other DVDs in the shop also feature real children.

“I feel sorry for the children,” Kanajiri tells me.

These so-called “junior idol” DVDs became popular after the production of child pornography was outlawed in 1999. They dodged the law as long as the children’s genitals were covered, but Kanajiri argues they’re now illegal after the law was strengthened last June.

“People who exploit should be punished properly,” she says. “It’s completely illegal under the law, but the police haven’t cracked down.”

As we know, a certain famous pop singer used to be a junior idol, a fact conveniently forgotten by some.

Either way, while we don’t condone some of the content, we are fearful for redundant police crackdowns and government “clean-ups” that will surely increase as we head towards the 2020 Olympics. Articles like this in the overseas media can only add to the pressure on the authorities to do something, even if it’s pointless.