Japan lowers age of adulthood to 18: Implications for adult video porn industry

April marks the start of the 2022 fiscal and academic years in Japan. It also brings with a major change for young people: the age of adulthood will come down from 20 to 18.

Eighteen- and 19-year-olds can already vote, so this change has already been in the works for a while. One of the major consequences of this is regards contracts (somewhat strangely, the age for smoking, drinking, and gambling — all the good things about being an adult — will remain 20). In the past, they needed parental consent to sign a commercial contract until they reached the age of majority.

Given that a lot of idols (music and gravure, etc.) start off as teens (or even tweens), this may mean an uptick in the number of young women signing to agencies without their guardians’ explicit permission or knowledge.

It could also impact the adult industry, which has already come under criticism for coercing young women to appear in porn, resulting in scandals and arrests.

In principle and practice, performers currently have to be 20 (since their legal guardian is very unlikely to consent to them appearing in porn while still a minor). There’s now an increased risk in teenagers signing up for porn after threats or “persuasion,” or signing a contract for things they aren’t expecting: what they think is just a simple photo or video shoot might evolve into something quite different in the studio, and when the other people are older men.

Being under 20 was previously a useful get-out option for teenagers who realized they were getting into something they hadn’t realized they were signing up for, and has led to releases being canceled or withdrawn. Even a powerful gravure agency or porn production company can’t argue with someone’s legal age.

Legal experts have taken an interest in this issue and the government has confirmed that 18- and 19-year-olds will be treated as full adults in regard to appearing in adult video (porn) from April.

The implications of the change have attracted criticism from Ayaka Shiomura, a politician and herself a former gravure idol (and the target of sexist attacks by her peers). She argues that it may lead to exploitation of high school students, who will no longer be able to back out of contracts that involve work they hadn’t anticipated.

We presume the change won’t have much impact for sex workers, since formal contracts are surely rarely signed in those cases anyway. It might, however, lead to more young women signing contracts with establishments and services they are led to believe are regular cafes or the like, only to discover they are actually a form of “JK business” for customers to take dates with schoolgirls.