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ASIA
APRIL 19, 1999 VOL. 153 NO. 15
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The standard opposition to any attempt at curbing porn is that it infringes upon free speech, a concept handed to Japan by the U.S. after World War II and, as in America, defended fiercely by activists. "I quite agree that we have to fight against the sexual abuse of children," says parliament member Yukio Edano. "But we have to weigh that against protecting the rights to free speech."
Preventing people from getting their hands on pornography doesn't seem to be much of a threat right now. The country is awash in child porn, and there's little attempt at hiding it. Subway riders peruse pornographic comics that are explicit, graphic and sometimes violent in their depiction of young girls. Porn outlets dot the landscape of Japanese cities, and even mainstream book shops, newsstands and convenience stores sell explicit material. General interest magazines and newspapers also feature erotic photography, as well as advertisements for sex shops and escorts.
Countless magazines and videos offer images of girls dressed in school uniforms, a favorite fantasy. Girls in physical education classes and at swimming pools sometimes become unknowing subjects of clandestine photographers. Their handiwork ends up filling pages of specialized magazines that show girls in shorts or underwear or undressing in public changing rooms. Much of it ends up on the Internet, as well. "We get asked all the time by men to go with them to hotels to take naked pictures," says a 14-year-old girl loitering outside a bar in one of Tokyo's neon-lit entertainment meccas, Ikebukuro. On a rainy Saturday night, the streets are jammed with young girls and male recruiters, called scouts, who try to coax the girls into clubs that feature advertising placards depicting cartoon schoolgirls and come-ons like "Let's enjoy play with sexy girls." "Usually I say no," she insists. "But if they give me 80,000 yen [$675], I'll do it."
Japan has a polite term for the teen-sex peddlers: enjo kosai, which translates as "supportive relationship." According to Junko Miyamoto, coordinator of a private group campaigning to stop sexual exploitation of children, the term was invented "to make prostitution sound O.K." Of the dozens of girls Time recently interviewed, each said she had been offered money to have sex or be photographed nude. There are myriad ways for male customers to hook up with enjo kosai: karaoke lounges, love hotels, strip clubs, magazine ads and telephone clubs where men sit in a booth and take calls from girls dialing in on their cell phones. "The problem is people don't regard this as sexual exploitation," says Miyamoto. "They regard it as misbehaving kids."
The common explanation for Japan's tolerance of child porn is that the country is run by a clique of old men with little sensitivity toward women and children. But it's not just old men who are involved. "Most of our customers are in their 30s," says Seiji Wasaki, 27, a clerk in a porn shop in Tokyo's Shinjuku entertainment district. Parliament member Edano, at 34 one of Japan's youngest politicians, views it as a matter of choice. "You can't neglect the fact that some high school girls quite willingly do this," he says. "If the girl and the man agree to exchange money for sex, and if it's really her will, then it is completely the act of individuals and shouldn't be regulated." The problem, Edano says, is that the girls haven't been properly educated to make an informed decision. A man who frequents teen prostitutes (and who prefers not to be identified) claims that two years ago, the going rate for sex with a 16-year-old girl was $250. Today, men want younger partners. A tryst with a 12-year-old costs more than $400.
There's another theory for the obsession with pedophilia: that Japanese men feel threatened by adult women. "Many men are incapable of relating to adult women on an equal stance," says Yukihiro Murase, a professor of human sexuality at Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University. Whatever the explanation, it won't be easy getting a tough law against child porn through the male-dominated parliament. In fact, a similar effort failed last year. But the exposure of Japan's child porn on the Internet may serve a useful purpose for cracking down on this shameful trade, for it has brought the smut out of the insular world of Japan for all the world to see. "We feel embarrassed," says parliament member Moriyama. "So now we want to hurry up and do something."
With reporting by Mari Calder, Sachiko Sakamaki, Hiroko Tashiro and Anne Usher/Tokyo
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