Elections bring out the eccentrics, with plenty of novelty candidates reliably popping up to keep us amused. Past examples include the wannabe politician who wore government-supplied face masks as a bra or the regular appearances of Teruki Goto -- including once nude on his campaign poster.
With the recent passing of the controversial new law regulating the porn industry, how are candidates responding to the current situation?
We found two intriguing examples among candidates for the upcoming Upper House election.
Riyo Takahashi, the 48-year-old founder of the Japanese video hosting site ...
As already reported several times on this blog, Japan's groundbreaking new porn law that aims to protest performers' rights has now passed the Diet after approval in the Upper House on June 15.
The legislation, which was initially proposed by opposition lawmakers and taken up by a cross-party group, was sparked by the realization that lowering the age of adulthood to 18 would have implications for previous safeguards for young people working in porn or the gravure industry, and fears that teenagers would be exploited and coerced into contracts they either did not understand or did not really ...
As widely covered on this blog, the lowering of the age of adulthood in Japan from 20 to 18 has sparked a scramble to create a new exemption for 18- and 19-year-olds in regard to contracts for adult video.
As was belatedly discovered, the new age of adulthood would make legal contracts fully binding, removing the previous safeguard that allowed teenagers to back out of contracts. After initially hoping to introduce a simple exemption mechanism, politicians have eventually moved forward with an entirely new, more ambitious new law aimed at adult video performers that enables all performers to ...
Given the wide-ranging discussions now taking place about introducing a new law with major implications for the porn industry in Japan, we wanted to share a related reform proposal from a few years ago.
Given that the potential new law is intended to protect young and vulnerable performers from coercion, increase performer rights, and give them more control over how their bodies are used, we wonder if anyone is taking note of what a former adult video actress suggested back in late 2018, when the initial coercion issue was in the spotlight.
Aged 43 at the time, the retired porn star Yuri ...
MeToo has finally caught up to the Japanese film industry, with multiple allegations of assault and harassment against directors Hideo Sakaki and Sion Sono as well as actor Houka Kinoshita.
Amid concerns over coercion in porn, politicians in Japan have been working on creating a legal exemption for adult video contracts to the newly lowered age of adulthood in Japan (from 20 to 18).
Though the move, which was prompted by the realization that the legal change this spring would remove the safeguard for porn whereby underage performers required a parental guardian to sign for them, has enjoyed ...
A cross-party set of Japanese lawmakers succeeded in putting together emergency legislation on March 31 exempting the changes to the age of adulthood for contracts related to adult video.
From today, April 1, the age of majority becomes 18 in Japan, though people are still unable to drink or smoke until 20. The voting age was already lowered a while ago. Perhaps the biggest effect of this change is that 18- and 19-year-old can now sign fully binding contracts with employers without the consent of a legal guardian. Previously, they retained the right to cancel a contract.
This was seen as a ...
How consensual is porn?
The upcoming change to the age of adulthood in Japan and its implications for people signing contracts to do porn has prompted politicians to scramble to make legislation protecting teenagers from embarking upon an adult video career. (Opposition lawmaker Ayaka Shiomura, however, has faced male laughter when addressing the issue in the Diet.)
The situation has reignited the issue of consent and coercion in porn, with some arguing that women as young as 18 or 19 shouldn't be allowed to sign contracts independently due to the complex nature of the legal clauses and ...
We normally find ourselves writing with glee about Japanese adult video's penchant for parody, in which the industry often reacts very quickly to events and cultural phenomena with pastiche porn par excellence.
But this time, JAV was beaten to the punch by porn makers in Taiwan.
Netflix's Korean hit Squid Game, whose sex scenes we have written about, has now inspired a porn rip-off on the East Asian island nation.
Details are slim, though news about the upcoming porn release is spreading online for the past week or so. With the original drama's themes of punishment and torture, it's ripe ...
We have by now learned to accept the innate contradiction that exists at the heart of Japanese porn: that the country has one of the largest, most varied industries in the world, and yet it also adheres to an interpretation of a century-plus-old obscenity law that says you cannot show genitalia. Hence JAV always has "mosaic" -- pixellation of the penis and vagina.
We have gotten used to this and no longer find it distracting, nor do we think it actually obscures the really important stuff (i.e., the beautiful face and body of the porn star).
Others, though, disagree and there exist ...
As we continue to watch the new season of the Netflix show The Naked Director and its galvanic portrayal of the 1980s and 1990s Japanese adult video industry, porn shoots have been on our mind even more than usual.
In behind-the-scenes photos of porn shoots, we are amazed by so many things.
How many staff are involved and how, if you'll excuse the pun, hard the work it is, getting the right angles and lighting. In these corona times, as two pictures recently shared by the AV director Daiki Kato (Samoari) demonstrate, they also have to wear masks (except the ...
