Legal Status of Cartoon Pornography Depicting Minors - Japan

Japan

Japan has unique laws regarding child pornography. Prior to the late 1990s, it was legal to sell and distribute actual child pornography. Between 1999 and 2004, Japan tightened its regulation of child pornography, but simple possession remains legal. Despite these tightening regulations, there is still a legal market for child erotica as illustrated by the continued production of junior idol media, erotic manga genres such as lolicon and shotacon, and the appearance of their themes in erotic computer games and doujinshi. UNICEF Japan and other organizations have petitioned Japan to outlaw not only actual child pornography but also cartoon pornography depicting minors, but they have not obliged so far. Japan, along with Russia, are the only two member countries in the G8 that have not outlawed the simple possession of child pornography. On March 19, 2010, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government originally planned to vote on whether to ban or regulate the sale of lolicon material, but decided to postpone the vote. They later struck down the bill. On August 25, 2011, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party submitted a petition requesting stricter laws on child porn, which included animated child porn.

In late June 2013, the Liberal Democratic Party moved forward with their new Child Porn law proposal, which also bans Lolicon. Due to the July Upper House elections, a final decision has been delayed until Autumn.