Japan bans child porn, but not when in comic books, video games, anime

Japan's parliament has passed a law that bans possession of child pornography, but excludes sexually explicit depictions of children in comics, animation and computer graphics.

The upper house voted Wednesday to approve the law, which was passed by the lower house earlier this month.

The law provides for prison terms of up to one year and fines of up to 1 million yen ($9,800) for having pornographic photographs or videos of children. It allows a grace period of one year for people owning such materials to dispose of them.

The law was first proposed in May 2013 as an amendment to an earlier law that banned production and distribution of child pornography but not ownership of such materials.

Pictures and drawings of children for the purposes of pedophilic sexual gratification are easily found online in Japan.

Child advocates and other critics of the new legislation say it is a long-overdue improvement but are unhappy with the exclusion of depictions of sexual fantasies involving children in manga comic books, anime and video games.

Those so-called creative industries are a pillar of the government's "Cool Japan" effort to expand culture-related exports and are worth hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenues.

The exclusion was made after publishers and lawyers' associations contended that a ban on such images would violate the constitutional right of free speech.

According to HumanTrafficking.org, Japan is a hub for the production and distribution of child pornography, part of a massive sex industry that includes prostitutes dressed in school uniforms and other outfits meant to cater to pedophiles.

The new law requires Internet providers and other such companies to cooperate with police in preventing and investigating distribution of child pornography, which it defines as photos and videos that expose or focus on children's genitalia.

Police say widespread use of smartphones has aided the distribution of pornographic images of children. They reported 1,644 cases of child pornography in 2013.

The Associated Press