Japan’s National Police Agency announced recently that there was an all-time high record of criminal cases involving child pornography production and sales in Japan for 2011. 1455 cases involving minors under 18 were uncovered.

Japan is one of the last countries together with Russia, where it is illegal to sell, display and produce child pornography, but still legal to possess such material.

In 2010, UNICEF urged Japan to ban possession of child pornography, saying the law at the time was insufficient. However, the number of children whose pornographic images were posted on the internet and who fell victim of pornography also hit an all-time high of 638, up to 3.9 percent from the previous year. About 16 percent among them were primary school children or younger. A three year old girl was the youngest victim. Shihoko Fujiwara, the head of Polaris Project Japan, an NGO which combats human trafficking in the country stated, “Japan remains one of the largest producers of child pornography in the world and those images are sometimes used to blackmail the victims and are part of Japan’s human trafficking problems.”

(In the past, Polaris Project Japan has worked with the police to facilitate the arrests of child pornographers.)

Last April, Japan’s internet service providers launched a system to block child porn images. The police have cracked down on child porn cases by focusing on images posted on the Internet. However, the system does not affect file-sharing.

Cases involving file-sharing programs destined for delivery increased 136 percent from the previous year to 368, the police said.

According to the NPA, the Acts Related to Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Child Protection were enacted in May 1999 and became effective in November of that same year.

These acts made “distribution of child pornography through electro-magnetic ways” a punishment. For child pornography, in 2007, a total number of 377 persons were arrested on 567 cases, including 192 cases involving the use of the Internet.

UNICEF Japan said that thanks to the Japanese ICT companies that introduced a new system to block Internet users to find child abuse images, the number of prosecutions is up. “However, we believe that, like in other countries, that number (uncovered in the NPA report) is still the tip of the iceberg.”  UNICEF added, “We know that a great deal of child abuse images are now being distributed through peer to peer software, which cannot be blocked by the Internet blocking system.”

The NPA is promoting measures, including exchange of information with relevant countries through ICPO to detect a suspect in child pornography, but said in response to questions, “We don’t consider the 8.4 percent increase of child porn production and sales and the 3.9 percent increase of victims being a social problem or really that newsworthy.”

The establishment of an International Child Sexual Exploitation database has been under study, and in September 2005, the establishment of working with this database was taken to ICPO, according to information posted on the Police of Japan homepage.

Since a great number of child porn is globally spreading through the Internet, and Japan being one of the “Internet giants”, UNICEF is now urging all those involved to “take further actions to protect children” not only in Japan, but also in every corner of the world.

While UNICEF in Japan have been advocating for the introduction and amendment of an “anti-child pornography law” and related measures, such as blocking the Internet, since 1997, “UNICEF has not observed any major positive outcome since the last time Japan’s laws were revised in 2004.”

The United States has pressured Japan for many years to criminalize the possession of child porn material. Groups opposed to Japan’s lax stance on child pornography point out that victims suffer not only when child abuse images are produced—when the actual violence is made on children. Victims also suffer as long as unknown people possess these images. The victims live with the constant fear of having someone see them being raped or sexually abused again.

British, US, and Australian law enforcement sources have stated that every year they give the National Police Agency hundreds of tips on cases of child pornography originating from Japan and almost none are ever turned into criminal prosecutions. Japanese detectives in the Saitama, Ibaragi, Tokyo, and Chiba police forces have said on background that the failure to criminalize possession frustrates their investigations and leaves them angry and upset. One detective from the Chiba Police Department laments, “We’d love to go after the child pornographers but since possession isn’t a crime, getting a search warrant is nearly impossible. To investigate child pornography ring, the first step is to gather evidence, but simply knowing that an individual possesses child pornography isn’t enough to get any judge to give us a search warrant. We can’t seize their computers; we can’t follow up leads. It’s not that we don’t want to prosecute these sickos—we just aren’t given the tools to do it.”

Child Abuse in 2011

There were also a record number of 398 victims, which constitute 38 more cases than the previous year. Of the total number of victims, 39 died. The abuses could go from physical, sexual, neglect and psychological abuses.

The National Police Agency also reported 384 cases of child abuse cases in 2011*. In 2007, a total number of 1361 persons were arrested for 1914 offences.

* Some victims are involved in more than one case.