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 ...
Tokyo Reporter has an intriguing little report from a tabloid.
In the January 31 issue of Shukan Asahi, Minori Kitahara expressed concern over the popularity of a male masturbation aid that attempts to simulate the feeling of sex with an underage girl.
Kitahara is a fortysomething female "sexpert" and bestselling author. She was apparently shocked -- we weren't -- by the high sales ranks on Amazon.co.jp for such onahole masturbation sleeves as the Innocent Little Sister Onahole and Seven Teen Bordeaux Onahole, which replicate a sexual experience with a Japanese teenaged virgin.
“I don’t ...
Just when you think Yasushi Akimoto and his minions cannot go any further... they do.
AKB48's latest sell-out, a TV commercial for Puccho, sees them dancing to the sounds of their own "music" as they eat the product being advertised. But, this being AKB, nothing is simple and everything is queasy.
The heads of the young girls are pasted in the Most Obvious Photoshopping of the Year Award-winning style onto the bodies of dancing children. Yes, children. This time there is no mistake.
We simply cannot fathom what ad agency chicanery came up with the concept that the ...
It seems that it's not just us guys who find Japanese schoolgirls too hot to handle.
Police have arrested a 25-year-old female teacher at a school in Kunitachi, a suburb in west Tokyo. She was found to have nude videos of 11-year-old girls in her class and has been charged with possession of illegal pornography. Not sure what sentence she might get but we reckon it's safe to say her teaching career is over.
It was in June this year that the young woman, Kaori Yamakawa, apparently made the videos as her own personal, bizarre skin flick. It features female sixth-grade students using a ...
As you know, we are about as liberal as you can get on Tokyo Kinky. And we also think that even just a cursory glance at history and past civilisations shows that concepts of sexuality are not universal but rather contextual and culturally relative.
We don't think you can define what is right or wrong -- or normal or abnormal -- by simple black-and-white lines.
And so we've had a fairly relaxed and non-pensive view on the lolicon ("Lolita Complex") evident in Japanese society, from its more innocent forms -- teenagers like Ai Hashimoto or Aira Mihana posing for bikini shots -- to the ...
One of Japan's most popular "entertainers" these days is Mana Ashida, a child actress aged just seven years old.
In her latest TV advertising campaign, some innovative ad guys came up with the idea of having Mana dance in a sexy move reminiscent of Korean girl band KARA.
So we get to see Mana-chan gyrate her "thighs" while wearing a short skirt. K-pop group KARA alone have caused a sensation here and in their native Korea for their too-sexy dance moves. So apparently getting a young infant to imitate their groove was a good idea...
We guess the gimmick is the fun of marrying ...
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 ...
