You can read the replies i got, clarifying my claim, i got a lot
actually, and quite surprisingly, i got helpful and informative replies, which is rare in the internet
So yeah, it was not a myth, they just never bothered to update the law until they changed it per prefecture to 16-18, mostly as a performative act to stop being judged by foreign countries, which is better than doing nothing i guess?
That got me to think then, why it was performative, so i went on a small google search and wikipedia dive
And i have come back with some other examples to back up my claim that Japan doesn't cares
This year the producer of "Suzume" and "Your Name", Koichiro Ito, is facing up to 6 years of prison, for sexually exploiting more than a hundred minors, which is a mind-numbingly low sentence, and assuming that he does serve time, he is pretty much getting away with it, and who knows if he will serve any jail time at all because
In 2017 the author of "Rurouni Kenshin" Nobuhiro Nishiwaki, was caught for possessing so much CP the authorities believed he was a distributor, turns out that was his personal stash, as a result, he was finned ¥200,000, and continued his life as normal
In 2002 the author of "Toriko" and "Seikimatsu Leader den Takeshi!" Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro, was caught for paying a 16 year old to have sex with him, this violated child prostitution laws (so if he hadn't paid her, he would have been in the clear), as a result he was sentenced to 2 years in prison, but he never really served that time, and was put in probation for 4 years instead, as a result his series "Seikimatsu Leader den Takeshi!" was cancelled, but thanks to that he was able to then make "Ring" and "Toriko" which was way more popular than Takeshi ever was
Koichiro Ito is like Shimabu and Watsuki combined, but chances are he will be put on probation and finned, and then go back to producing the next geric romcom anime hit (you all know that all of the Makoto Shinkai anime, are the same story being told again and again, the guy is a one trick pony, and while the pony is cute, the trick is not even that good)
So there's a record of people of very high profile and public images, who represent industries, and the face of a nation, whose crimes should have turned into scandals, and whose careers should have ended, getting away with very low and lenient sentences when involved with sexual crimes against minors, with little to no societal consequences or backlash, so the problem must run deeper than an uncaring law, there has to be a societal aspect to this right?
And as it turns out, there is, so remember how people replied to me telling me that the age of consent was updated just to answer to international pressure? well turns out this also applies to pretty much everything else, the concept of stricter laws regarding sexual crimes against minors is pretty much a western imposition rather than something the Japanese developed and adapted in an organic manner
As a result anyone who was a young adult in the 90s in Japan, would have seen child pornography as just another normal flavour of porn, and develop their tastes and judgement accordingly, because it was still legal and easily accessible in Japan, they wouldn't go to change and enforce laws against the sexual exploitation of minors until the late 90s, by sheer international pressure in 1999, however that only covered the making of and the distribution of CP
Which means that possesion was still legal, until the UNICEF branch of Japan called for a reform in 2008, this change was so drastic, that within the manga world mangaka themselves campaigned in order to try and repel the law to make possession illegal in japan, one of them being none other than the late Kentaro Miura author of Berserk, who argued that CP and hentai depicting CP protected real children from pedos... but what about the kids used to make the CP in the first place Miura?
They failed however, and possession of CP became illegal in 2014 just 11 years ago
Given the circumstances of the country, in which how the laws develop by inposision, and cultural changes occur suddendly without reflection or time to transition into understanding why such laws were neccesary or important, i can say with confidence that they don't care, in fact for most of these authors and consumers who are now on their 40s and 30s, all these things used to be legal and socially acceptable
And given how lenient the law is, and how little social consequences there are, in a way they are still kind of legal, and pretty much socially acceptable, unlike being caught with marijuana for example
So this small diggin exercise, helped me to expand a more informed, but still very basic understanding as to why they don't care, and why shotacon and lolicon is such a preminent concept in Japanese media, but there's something missing i wanted to answer on this short expedition, but couldn't find an explanation
For people born and raised in Japan such things are normalized, so it makes sense for them to let it slide, but...
Western anime and manga fans, also echo the same nonce ideology and discourse, and that i do find puzzlingly weird, because unless you are a Drake fan, being a pedo is not socially acceptable, and yet, i guarantee you, this long post is gonna bury me on a bunch of replies by sus enjoyers, all the way from the ones that are aware that they have trash and troublesome taste (which fair at least you know that it is what it is), to the wildest most delulu takes
But fuck it i already wrote this wall, i can just ignore the replies
