Japan is actually one of the most conservative nations so that's part of all that. They can have super perverted stuff but it doesn't effect them so much because they value family and hard work and honor above all else.

Japan really is one of the most conservative first world countries. Porn needs to be censored, pretty much nothing objectionable on daytime tv or even at night, prostitution is illegal, homosexuality is not persecuted but tends to be not acknowledged and drugs and guns are a not issue.
They just tend to ignore a LOT but restriction guidelines have become stricter in all sorts of places(especially videogames) in the last years. Be highly productive and get your freak on behind closed doors is their motto. A used pantys machine in the street is more indicative of the neighborhood it is placed and not of their society as a whole.

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

People who voted yes are brainless for 2 reasons:
1) drawings do not hurt anyone
2) would you really want the police to waste their time arresting lolicons over arresting actual criminal who hurt children?

Annoying poll to be honest.

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It always weirds me out to see people who have overly idealistic views of a country. In the case of Japan, the country has its own share of issues related to sex crimes. @bnad mentioned the low rate of sex crimes in Japan. I think this has more to do with the lack of reporting that happens: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/reinvention/issue s/volume1issue1/gray/.
Also, until recently child pornography was still legal. Even now, the country has given people a 1-year grace period to get rid of child pornography material (why this takes a year to do is beyond me).
Anyways, a long message just to say don't paint Japan as some perfect country that gets everything right.

As far as should loli and shota be banned, I would say no. I view manga as an art form. If you ban everything that is illegal in real life from art, then people could no longer depict things like murder and robberies in movies. As we know, people can draw distinctions from things they view for fun and things they do in real life. Just being you like watching horror movies doesn't mean you fantasize about killing people. Looking at loli and shota doesn't necessarily mean that you fantasize about assaulting children.

And for people who say that criminals get their ideas from watching tv and movies, that would mean that there were no crimes before the invention of film.

yeah, i do. "fake" or not i don't like it. (for the record, don't like violent video games either).

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WEBTOONS ヽ( ★ω★)ノ

They started to actually introduce proper anti-child pornography laws in 1999 due to international pressure and became harder on the stance in recent years. I can foresee some hard times for the hentai/doujinshi publishers in the future.
Even Mr. Negima had some things to say but he writes lolicon porn as hobby(yes he does) so i wasn´t surprised.
Here are some basic facts to conversation sake and yes the National Diet had the same conversation we are now having way to often:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_Japan

Violent video games sell the best. Rated M for MONEY.

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

I never said it was perfect I said they had conservative values õ.o

Producing hardcore child pornography was never legal, just possessing it. What was legal is producing softcore porn i.e. semi nudity, lolis in swimsuits and bikinis making suggestive poses and stuff as well as child nudity on film/photo without sexually suggestive content.

I'm for the ban of real child porn, but the international pressure on Japan to enact laws against child porn is just part of a much larger campaign that seeks to force western-style cultural marxism on the Japanese (multiculturalism, open borders, hate speech laws and lgbt rights, to just name a few).

Violent sex crime is barely a problem in Japan. Japan's real problems are underage prostitution and sex tourism.

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I voted no/no.

I don't like loli or shota, but I don't care that it's out there, I just ignore them (as best I can). It has a following and I have no reason to ban it, as it's fiction (clearly, as it is manga). Real life imitation though is a whole other ball park, so can not be compared.

Fiction is fiction. I read romance novels that have werewolves and vampires in it, doesn't mean I wish to meet a werewolf or vampire (that would be creepy and scary and most likely lead to my death).

To read about something and to commit that thing are not the same. You read about a crime, nobody is hurt or harmed. You commit a crime, people are hurt or harmed. People know the difference between fiction and real life, and those who don't are taken out of society (jail, hospital, mental ward...).

Enjo kōsai is mostly a myth and widly misused/overused in japanese media for the "oh i am sooo deep and grown up/look at me and my relevance" social commetary and cheap melodrama.

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

I voted Don't care, and I really don't. I don't have any sort of attraction toward Lolis, to be honest it sort of bothers me that It gets used so much, but I don't think It's right to judge other people fetishes, as long as they don't hurt anybody, plus It doesn't really affect me, in the case of Shota I'm specially neutral, because it's not nearly as popular as Loli and therefore not seen as often (except that lately the whole otonoko/trap thing has become really popular, but then again It's also quite easy to ignore)
Bottom line, I don't see it as a terrible thing, people don't go around beating hookers after playing GTA, nor trying to fly after reading a Superman's comic (unless they have mental problems, but if that's the case then they were bound to do some shit, whatever the reason, when not taken care of properly), so I don't think there is any real need to ban it, but If they did it wouldn't bother me either.

On another note, the people that vote Yes/No or No/Yes do bother me, I understand the people that might want it banned, and people than don't, but the people that think one is ok and the other not strike me as both sexist and hypocritical, don't be dicks people.

Sounds like you don't read at all.

Just a question, do you think that the international pressure is a bad thing? I can't comment much on open borders, but for the other issues you mentioned, I do think that there needs to be a change. I wish that the pressure to change was coming from within Japan rather than outside of it, but (not sure if this is accurate) I don't see Japan as really a country that fights for expanding individual people's rights and freedoms. I remember learning how it wasn't until America came in at the end of WW2 that women's rights were expanded. There didn't seem to be a movement by Japanese women to have more rights.

As far as violent sex crime, I wouldn't say that it's barely a problem. Although, I do agree that underage prostitution is a bigger problem.

Oooooh, we can comment.

I voted no/no.

Drawings are a victimless crime. If I draw someone getting beheaded or a skull getting f*cked through the eye socket, I'm not going to go out and repeat that. If someone gets off to that - good for them. At least they're not going and recreating that shit themselves. Anyone who takes advantage of a child like that, with full knowledge of what they're doing - is disgusting. But a 2D image? Sure it's not the nicest of hobbies (but neither is reading hard core BL or watching gay porn) but nothing harmful about it. (Unless you believe video games promote violence and rainbows promote homosexuality.)

If we made this stuff illegal how would it even be policed? Would it be "all work featuring participants under 18 is illegal"? But we know 16 year olds have sex. We know that 14 year olds have sex. Highschool students do it - would we ban all those high school shoujo with sex? Maybe it'll say they're 18 but the character has a baby face. Would that be ok? Or would be ban "sexual acts with participants appearing under 18."? Where do we stop?

Do we decide to ban rape too - cause that's illegal in real life. Do we ban the depiction of drugs? Perhaps, if this was 100 years ago - we ban depictions of homosexual acts. What about incest - that's illegal in some places. Censorship is terrifying, and I worry if we begin banning depictions of just one thing, we won't stop.