A State Reliant on Pornography: Japan in the Twenty-first Century

Global Studies Seminar Series 2012

It will be argued in this presentation, by Dr Caroline Norma that Japan’s child pornography problems occur within the context of a state that permits the organization of women and girls for pornography consumption in order to bolster its political viability. The economic malaise that has beset Japan since the 1990s has caused the increasing destabilisation of its male workforce, but this threat to the state remains placated as long as the sexual ‘comfort’ on offer to Japanese men continues to progress in its diversity and extremity. The Japanese government attracts international criticism for failing to act against child pornography, but continues to legally allow the possession of child pornography, and does not regulate the production of manga images of child sexual abuse. Critics claim that globalisation has elevated Japanese men’s technological and financial advantage over women in the region, and this has facilitated their overseas sex tourism and demand for foreign trafficked women. This paper will additionally account for their commercial sexual victimisation of Japanese women and girls in order to make comment on the nature of the patriarchal polity that reigns in twenty-first century Japan.

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