Japan’s Proud Tradition of Preteen Porn and Tentacle Rape

When Japanese parliament announced they would be outlawing possession of child pornography this week, children’s rights advocates were dismayed to learn the ban won’t extend to drawn depictions commonly found in manga and anime.

The bill builds on an existing law, introduced in 1999, that criminalizes the production and distribution of underage porn. Now anyone in possession of sexually explicit images of prepubescent children will also be open to prosecution, with jail terms of up to one year and fines of $10,000. However, there is a 12-month moratorium in place to allow people time to dispose of their preteen stash.

Politicians and activists say the new law brings Japan in line with international standards, but they, along with prominent members of the manga community, think more could be done to stem the sale of sex comics featuring kids.

Toshio Maeda is one of them. Widely considered to be the grandfather of erotic manga—known internationally as hentai, which translates to “perverse sexual desire”—he is credited with the resurgence of tentacle porn and is the author of the immensely popular Urotsukidōji, a sexually charged tale about a half-beast, half-human who is sent to Earth to protect the god of the demon world.

He is an unlikely opponent of the major manga and anime production houses, who say that banning drawn depictions of child porn, however abhorrent, would be a blow to freedom of expression and an affront to Japanese culture. But Maeda says that while it might make him unpopular among his peers, he is not against doing more to censor the underage illustrations, also known as lolicon (young girls) and shotacon (young boys).

“I think the victim’s feelings are more important than the right of freedom to speech or that crap. Is it weird that the tentacle master is saying this?” he says, adding that kid-focused manga makes him uncomfortable. “I am not entitled to say anything about other artists’ work. [But] to confess the truth, I hate them.”

It’s an interesting response, considering that Maeda’s own work often depicts youthful girls being penetrated by octopi, sometimes forcibly. But he defends this by saying he intentionally keeps their ages closer to 18, as opposed to the 10-year-olds common to lolicon and shotacon—a distinction foreign critics often fail to make.

“Asian girls look so young compared with Western girls. I think this might apply to manga in any genre,” he says. “For example, even in business manga a middle-aged salaried man looks like a teenage boy.”

Though he’s not a fan of the child porn subgenre, Maeda vehemently defends the erotic manga field in general, which he sees as the modern iteration of an important cultural tradition. Sexually explicit art has been widely venerated since the emergence of the woodblock prints in the Edo period (1603-1867), called ukiyo-e or shunga. There are even some examples that stretch as far back as the Heian period (794-1185). Depicting couples of different genders during intercourse, they were bought by both men and women and often displayed prominently in the home. More detailed shunga were often used as sex guides and given as gifts to children from wealthy families.

Calling manga a “remnant” of shunga, Maeda cites the influence of Western culture for the decline of this more libertarian view towards sexuality. However, it doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact on the manga trade. While it is illegal to show genitalia without a blur or pixilation, it’s hardly difficult to find rape, incest and interspecies comics in the sex districts of Japan’s larger cities.

“We don’t understand why western people make a fuss about that, it is merely fiction,” he says. “We human beings are not innocent. When you feel you want to kill somebody—you’ve probably had such feelings once or twice in your life, right?—or you want to rape or molest somebody, you need steam control. These kinds of hardcore scenes allow you to let off steam.”

It’s a difficult concept for many in the U.S. While teen-focused porn is common, there are laws limiting the possession of comics featuring violent or prepubescent sex. The PROTECT Act of 2003 covers the latter, criminalizing drawings and computer-generated images of children deemed obscene and lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Though the subjective nature of the wording means it can be difficult to prosecute.

Maeda’s own work hasn’t escaped attention. In 1999, an employee at a Dallas comic book store was charged with promoting obscenity for selling a copy of Demon Beast Invasion—which depicts beasts invading earth and impregnating adult human females. The man in question was fined $4,000 and sentenced to a year of probation. Maeda says this speaks to a weird disconnect in U.S. culture, where authorities seem more concerned about policing representations of sex and violence rather than addressing real-life instances.

“Grownups and kids are killed by guns in the U.S. every day,” he says. “And there are so many real victims of rape everywhere, including colleges. This is more serious and we Japanese people are shocked that you do nothing about this.”