Naked women may still greet magazine readers as they head home from work on the subway, but Japan hopes a new pornography and child prostitution law will help it lose its image as one of Asia's most licentious capitals, the Washington Post says - and put a serious dent in the child sex trade.
The law took effect in November and makes it a crime to distribute child porn or solicit minors for sexual purposes, either in Japan or abroad, where the Post says the Japanese have a longtime "sordid" reputation for "sex tourism" and recruitment of Asian women to work in Japanese brothels.
Japan's parliament, the Diet, didn't go so far as to criminalize possession of porn, but the country's largest daily newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, has announced it will not accept any more advertising from two racy weeklies. These ads show suggestive models and bluntly sexual language, the Post says, and had been regular and profitable ads for the Japanese daily.
Yomiuri Shimbun says they made the move because of complaints in and out of the company about the content. The paper didn't mention the new law, but it seems clear the law will help set a new tone for Japanese sex consumerism, the Post says.
"In Asia, Japan has the worst record of child sexual exploitation," the law's chief sponsor, Mayumi Moriyama told an Asian-Pacific conference on human trafficking in Tokyo last week, according to the Post. "It is said that 80 percent of the child pornography distributed in the world is made in Japan."
She says her country's "unrepentant attitude" about the subject has tarnished Japan's image. "It is a grave situation when Japan's dignity and honor are questioned" because of sex, she told the conference.
With the new law applying to Japanese in or outside the homelands, the Post says the law is "a sweeping move that put a quick chill on advertisements for 'sex tourism' to Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and other Asian countries."
Japanese law enforcement says twenty Japanese men have been arrested for child prostitution and 22 for violating the porn provisions of the new law, the Post says. The Diet finally enacted the law following public outrage over stories about "arranged dates" involving older men paying for liaisons with schoolgirls, the paper continues, though some of that activity has since gone underground. And other reports indicate that there has still been an increase in Asian women imported for prostitution in Japan.
