In the Empire of Child Pornography: AMAZON JAPAN REMOVES CHILD PORN FROM THEIR WEBSITE May 2009
by Jake Adelstein and Polaris Project Japan
“Idols” in Japan refer to pin-up girls, teen pop stars, and generally young models. However, prepubescent “idols” are called “junior idols,” a word which has been co-opted to distribute child pornography.
The internet and bookstores and major telecommunication companies subscription services often sell “junior idol” photos and movies, and the sexual depictions in them have become more extreme in recent years.
The term “child pornography” as used in the Act on Punishment of Activities Relating to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, and the Protection of Children bans photographs and recording media which depicts any pose of a child engaged in sexual intercourse or any conduct similar to sexual intercourse. Also, the Act terms child pornography as visual materials with any pose of a child wholly or partially naked.
Although many of the “junior idols” DVDs and photo books don’t directly violate the law, they are full of scenes introducing young school girls and boys, wearing revealing, skimpy bikinis, or wet t-shirts and or speedo briefs– or posing for sexual acts—and these scenes clearly made to arouse or stimulate the viewer’s sexuual desire. There’s no one who sincerely doubts it’s pedophile junk food.
Polaris Project Japan spent several months researching the photo albums and DVDs on major online store including Amazon Japan and made a list of 136 such DVDs and books with 8-17 year-old children depicted in sexually provocative poses and requested Amazon Japan to stop selling them.
Responding to the request, Amazon Japan removed 84 items from their online store this May. Polaris Project welcomes the initiative taken by Amazon Japan continues to advocate on this issue.
Author’s note: Japanese bookstores now regularly carry “junior idol” materials with sexual themes, text, and poses, and there are several pornographic magazines which include “junior idol” sections. Japan is still one of the few countries where owning child pornography is legal.
For more information about Amazon’s decision to remove the DVDs read the article on Sankei Shimbun on May 18, 2009:
http://sankei.jp.msn.com/affairs/crime/090518/crm0905180136001-n1.htm (in Japanese)
We all need to demand that Amazon.co.jp stop selling child pornography. I am very sorry to say that Amazon.co.jp still has an incredible amount of child pornography on their website. If you wish to find proof of this you need to look no farther than specific search terms. The amount of material that the search “middle school student” produces is disgusting. Simply paste this terms into Amazon.co.jp and you will begin to get an idea as to what I am talking about:
“中○生” you have 62 results when I searched in June and all of these results are claiming to show actual sex acts with minors. The advertising is that these are middle school students. You may be able to hire some really talented actors but I can’t believe an 18 year old girl could convincingly pull off a 13-15 year old girl.
ロリナンパすぺしゃる – this series seems to prey upon girls in the 14-17 age range
“daisy prestige” – I think you would need to be stupid or blind to believe all of the girls portrayed are 18.
中学生 セックス – this is the most blatant search which returns the most blatant results
17の御法度 – this series translates as “17 contraband” well perhaps its just a title but they are advertising themselves in this title as if this series contains girls who are 17 thus the series is contraband.
未○年 – this series which was produced in 2008 translates as year of the sheep/goat which would mean these girls are being advertised as born in 1991 or 1992. that would advertise them in a coy way as being 16 or 17.
So to amazon.co.jp I would tell them that they have not even begun to eliminate the child porn that they have on their site.
Thank you very much for pointing this out. We’ll bring it up with Amazon Japan very soon. お世話様です。
The term pornography seems to be much more widely and broadly used over time. Originally it meant a photograph of a prostitute. It is easy to see how this gets extrapolated to the paid sex actors of adult films, but the application of it to unpaid sex acts, much less non-sexual acts which are merely at most erotic, is gradually making it lose the specificness of its meaning.
If people disapprove of such photographic books that is fine but I wish they would invent a new more proper term to refer to it. Really, to call this pornography not only inflates it to horrific proportions it does not match, but diminishes the impact of actual sexual abuse films which the police should be prioritizing rescuing victims from the creators of.
anyone who calls this porn has obviously never seen REAL PORN.