This is the mobile-friendly web version of the original article.

Pornography Its Harms and a New Legal Strategy: Research and Experience in Japan

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Volume 6 Issue 2, Article 3

3-2021

Seiya Morita

Kokugakuin University, fs_tr_mrt ‘at’ yahoo.co.jp
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8343-1265

Caroline Norma

RMIT University, caroline.norma ‘at’ rmit.edu.au
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6836-2054

Video: Kokugakuin University Introductory Video

Recommended Citation Morita, Seiya and Norma, Caroline (2021) “Pornography, Its Harms, and a New Legal Strategy: Research and Experience in Japan,” Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence: Vol. 6: Iss. 2, Article 3. DOI: 10.23860/dignity.2021.06.02.03 Available at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol6/iss2/3https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol6/iss2/3

This Research and Scholarly Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected].

1. Abstract
   1. Keywords
   2. Creative Commons License
   3. Acknowledgements

Abstract

In this article we describe pornography’s harms in Japan, which are known about from surveys and research, and from the outreach and consulting activities of Japanese feminist-abolitionist groups. Among these are the Anti-Pornography and Prostitution Research Group (APP) and People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence (PAPS). We then propose a renewed classification scheme for pornography’s harms that centrally considers the experiences of victims in Japan. Lastly, we consider various legal approaches to addressing the myriad harms we describe and suggest possibilities for a new legal strategy. The article’s research comes from Japanese-language materials produced by the abovementioned activist groups, as well as media reports of pornography-related crimes and court cases. Our aim in this article is to isolate each category of pornography’s harms so that individually tailored legal and public policy solutions might be tactically proposed and campaigned for, so that gains against the pornography industry can be made to the point where its operating environment as a whole becomes threatened.

Keywords

Japan, pornography, harm, legal approach, strategy, research, MacKinnon-Dworkin Ordinance

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank members of the Anti-Pornography and Prostitution Research Group (APP) and People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence (PAPS). Dignity thanks the following people for the time and expertise to review this article: Catharine A. MacKinnon, Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at University of Michigan Law School; and Hiroshi Nakasatomi, Osaka Electro-Communications University.

AFTER THE UNITED STATES, JAPAN IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S largest producers of pornography. Pornography produced in Japan is consumed in large volume on the Internet by men in Japan and men in China, South Korea, and Taiwan. According to the 2019 Year in Review statistical analysis of the world’s largest online pornography site Pornhub, the site’s most view pornographic category “Japanese”is popularly accessed not just from within Japan, but also South Korea, China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. (Pornhub, 2019). In addition, Japanese pornographic manga and animation, called hentai, is consumed worldwide. While such a large pornography-producing country like Japan necessarily brings about vast harms, it is also a country with a long history of grassroots community action to address these harms, as well as research and empirical data collection of its profound effects.

Accordingly, in this article, we describe pornography’s harms in Japan, which are known about from surveys and research, and from the supporting and consulting activities of Japanese feminist-abolitionist groups. Among these are the Anti-Pornography-and-Prostitution Research Group (APP), founded in 1999, and People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence (PAPS), founded in 2009. We then propose a renewed classification scheme for pornography’s harms that centrally considers the experiences of victims in Japan. Lastly, we consider various legal approaches to addressing the myriad harms we describe and suggest possibilities for a new legal strategy.

This article’s research and perspective contribute to an academic field that assesses legal and legislative approaches to suppression of the commercial pornography industry in different country jurisdictions. The field’s pioneer is Max Waltman, who examines anti-pornography executive and judicial initiatives in Sweden, Canada, and the United States (2014). In this work, Waltman asks from a critical perspective, “What is in the way of successfully challenging pornography as such in democratic legal systems?” (p. 13), and comprehensibly identifies structural and social barriers to official action against the industry. In 2016, Elza Ibroscheva undertook a similar analysis of Bulgaria, even if more limitedly. Earlier, in 2012, Bin Liang and Hong Lu assessed measures in the People’s Republic of China, but not from any perspective critical of the sex industry. This article contributes knowledge of Japan to this existing body of research. It follows Waltman in categorizing its assessment of Japanese judicial and legislative responses according to the specific harms of pornography they seek to address.