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 ...
Under Japan's current laws, it is illegal to produce and distribute child pornography. However, politicians are looking to toughen this up by making it illegal also top possess child porn. Japan is one of the few major industrialized nations not to have a law against this.
However, the new law will not include comic book depictions.
The proposed revision to the law would exclude manga, anime and computer graphics, but would make possession of other forms of child porn punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of 1 million yen (nearly $10,000).
The bill was debated by a ...
Getting a side job where you can watch uncensored porn sounds like a male dream come true. But hang on. Uncensored porn? Oh, right, in Japan, due to bizarre adherence to a century-old regulation created to try to make Japan similar to "moral" Christian western nations, porn has genitals blurred out.
Technically, if you are selling porn in Japan that isn't pixellated, you are breaking the law. (And then it gets complicated if it's just a photo with genitals that is more "artistic" than pornographic, or if it's a mainstream film with full-frontal nudity -- all of which were also censored until ...
The new "child porn" proposal put forward by the ruling LDP, the Komeito and Japan Restoration Party immediately stoked controversy in the manga and anime worlds, with insiders suggesting it would destroy the industries.
Now there is a suggestion that under the rules of the new law, even scenes from the famed and beloved kids' anime Doraemon wouldn't be safe from the censor's scissors.
Essentially it allows any depiction of under eighteen year-old people to be defined as child porn, and being caught with such filth can get you a year in jail or a hefty fine.
As part of the ...
A new ordinance has been passed by the Japanese government stating that extreme sexual acts such as rape, incest and other illegal sexual acts in anime and manga will be regulated as of April of 2011.
The Japan Times reports that while the ordinance is not a law, the industry will be forced to "self-regulate" any and all sex acts seen as too extreme by the government. They will also be called upon to prevent the purchase of said material by those under the age of 18.
The anime and manga community are taking this very seriously and several large manga production companies have even ...
