Pornography, Rape, and Sex Crimes in Japan☆

The question of how or even if pornography is linked to rape or other sex crimes has been with different societies for many years. In the United States, it was shown that, as far as could be determined by a Commission appointed by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson (Pornography, 1970), no such relationship of pornography leading to rape or sexual assault could be demonstrated as applicable for adults or juveniles. Following the idea of the 1970 President’s Commission, in 1986 the findings of the United States’ Attorney General’s Commission were released (Meese, 1986). Appointed in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan, this commission found, in contrast with the previous Presidential Commission, that: “substantial exposure to sexually violent materials … bears a causal relationship to antisocial acts of sexual violence” (Meese, 1986, p. 326) In distinction to the Presidential Commission, however, this Attorney General’s Commission was politically, not scientifically, constituted. This Meese Commission was primarily composed of nonscientists who did no research of their own and commissioned none. It solicited testimony mainly from specific parties and organizations that it anticipated would be sympathetic to its goals, while ignoring testimony from those it suspected would be disagreeable Lab 1987, Lynn 1986, Nobile & Nadler 1986. The Meese Commission’s own minority report, by two of the only three women on the panel—one of whom had a great deal of experience in sex research—dissented from the majority report in saying the findings were not in keeping with the amassed social science data (Meese, 1986). Subsequent nationwide studies in the United States also seemed to find no strong evidence that rape rates were associated with circulation rates of pornographic magazines Baron & Strauss 1987, Scott & Schwalm 1988.

In Britain, the privately constituted Longford Committee (Amis et al., 1972) reviewed the pornography situation in that nation and concluded that such material was detrimental to public morals. It, too, dismissed the scientific evidence in favor of protecting the public good against forces they thought denigrate or devalue human persons. The officially constituted British (Williams) Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship, however, in 1979 analyzed the situation and reported (Home Office, 1979): “From everything we know of social attitudes, and have learnt in the course of our enquires, our belief can only be that the role of pornography in influencing the state of society is a minor one. To think anything else … is to get the problem of pornography out of proportion” (p. 95).

A review report by McKay and Dolff (1985) for the Department of Justice of Canada essentially says, similarly: “There is no systematic research evidence available which suggests a causal relationship between pornography and the morality of Canadian society … [and none] which suggests that increases in specific forms of deviant behavior, reflected in crime trend statistics (e.g., rape) are causally related to pornography” (p. 93). In Canada, the Fraser Committee in 1985, after a review of the topic, concluded the evidence so poorly organized that no consistent body of evidence could be found to condemn pornography (Canada, 1985, pp. 99).

Among those European/Scandinavian societies investigated for any relation between the availability of pornography and rape or sexual assault, no such correlation could be demonstrated Kutchinsky 1985a, Kutchinsky 1991. For the countries of Denmark, West Germany,1 and Sweden, the three nations for which ample data were available at the time, Kutchinsky showed that as the amount of pornography increasingly became available, the rate of rapes in these countries either decreased or remained relatively level. According to Kutchinsky, only in the United States did it appear that, in the 1970s and early 1980s, as the amount of available pornography increased, some increase in rape occurred Kutchinsky 1985a, Kutchinsky 1991. But Kutchinsky also noted a change in how rape was recorded, which could account for the apparent increase in the American sex crime rate.

Considering the volume and intensity of debate in Europe and the United States surrounding the possible link between pornography and sex crimes it was thought valuable to see how another nation, one quite different from those in the West, compares in the availability of sexually explicit material and the occurrence of rape and other sex-related crimes. Japan, an Asian culture with its ancient tradition of male prerogative and female subservience and 13-year post-World War II period of legal prostitution provides a sufficient cultural contrast to that of the United States and the other Western countries investigated.

In Japan, a definite upswing in concern regarding pornography occurred at the beginning of the present decade. Conservative groups and the media began to call for government action to stem the rising tide of pornography that they saw. For instance, the citizens of Wakayama prefecture loudly called for the control of sexually explicit manga [comic books] directed at children (Mainichi-shinbun, 1990).

Presently in Japan, sexually explicit video tapes, books, and magazines, which cater to all sorts of erotic interests and fetishes, are readily available. These include sexually obvious manga without age restrictions for availability. Phone booths in commercial areas and city newspapers contain advertisements for sexual liaisons of every sort. However, this availability of modern pornography is relatively new. Essentially, since the end of World War II, with the imposition of American military rules, which lasted until 1951, there was prohibition of any sexually explicit material. This continued under the Japanese government into the late 1980s; images or depictions of frontal nudity were banned, as were pictures of pubic hair or genitals. No sex act could be depicted graphically.

The situation began to change markedly at the turn of the present decade. While the laws themselves were not modified, interpretation of them changed. Judges during this period became increasingly liberal, allowing more pornography of wider scope to be considered “not obscene.” Concomitantly with this, as the widely reported uproar regarding a case of rape by American servicemen of a young Okinawa girl in 1995 might reflect, this crime is taken quite seriously in Japan. Analysis, thus, particularly of the years covering this last decade of rapid change, seemed of value.

This present study concentrates on the offenses of rape, sexual assault, and public indecency in Japan, and analyzes how their occurrence correlates with the increasing availability of pornography. For comparison and as “control” measures we also look at the incidence of murder and nonsexual violent crimes for the same period. We particularly attend to any influence the introduction of widely available pornography might have had on juveniles.