Ask John: How Young is Too Young for Sexuality in Japanese Culture?

Question:
Many of the anime I’ve viewed have adolescent boys and girls in sexual situations or suggestive ones. Mainstream ones such as Evangelion and Love Hina. I understand that the Japanese audience will view sexuality differently than an American one. Is there any age or other instance where someone is deemed too young to be sexual in Japanese society?

Answer:
Japan definitely has a different perspective on sexuality than America does. Japanese culture treats sexuality as a natural human function to a greater extent than American society, which reacts to sex with an oddly bipolar revulsion for physical sex but a fascination with sexuality. Japan’s less reactionary and more biological attitude toward sexuality manifests in a thriving Japanese professional sex service industry, and a tolerance of depictions of sexuality. (Althoughly ironically the act of sex is acceptable, but depictions of pubic hair and genitalia are customarily prohibited in anime and manga.) Since Japanese culture tends to be rather blasé about sexuality, there are few major prohibitions or objections to the artistic sexual fetishization of fictional children in mainstream Japanese society.

Naturally, as a modern, enlightened society, Japan does not condone or tolerate physical, mental, or sexual child abuse. Japanese society also has legal ages of consent for sex and marriage. (Japan’s Penal Code Article 177 states that age of consent to sexual activity is 13 years, and Civil Code Articles 731 and 737 mandate age of consent for marriage is 16 for females and 18 for males.) The sexual fetishization of fictional children, however, is a different matter. Anyone who’s remotely familiar with Japanese animation has witnessed fictional teenage and pre-adolescent girls associated with sexuality. Excellent current examples include the Petopeto-san anime television series, which depicts a young looking adolescent girl nude in her bedroom lying beside a male classmate, and the Ichigo Marshmallow TV series that stars adorable pre-adolescent girls and uses close-ups of female hips and derrieres for its “eyecatch” illustrations. These “moe” anime, though, aren’t mainstream within Japanese culture. These shows and the manga they’re based on are created by and primarily appreciated within the small circle of Japanese citizens who enjoy such fantasies. There are also even smaller numbers of Japanese artists and fans that are attracted to fictional sexual commodification of children who are little more than babies.

Male and female Japanese manga artists including Hoshino Fuuta, Ujiie Moku, EB110SS, Marcy Dog, Nishi Iori, and countless others regularly contribute to an entire sub-genre of erotic manga that features boys and girls young enough to still be in diapers. While this sort of manga exists, it’s a minority of a sub-genre of the adult manga genre, which itself is already a minority. In one sense, Japanese society does tolerate the creation and existence of this sort of erotica, which American fans have playfully deemed “toddlercon” in parody of the Japanese “lolicon” genre. But realistically, I suspect that this variety of erotic manga is “accepted” in Japanese society mainly because most of mainstream Japanese society doesn’t even know that it exists, or at least isn’t familiar with it. Existence doesn’t imply approval. For example, the Ku Klux Clan legally exists in America, and American society tolerates its existence. But that doesn’t mean that American society condones or approves of organized discrimination. Likewise, the fact that fictional illustrations of child pornography legally exist in Japan doesn’t mean that Japanese society condones child abuse or underage sexuality.

Like all industrialized, first world nations, Japan doesn’t condone underage sexuality. Japan unquestionably does consider children “too young to be sexual.” But Japan also values freedom of artistic and creative expression and therefore has no prohibitions against the fictional illustration of children in sexual situations. The existence of erotic manga, anime style illustrations, and fan produced anime placing children in sexual positions doesn’t reflect a Japanese approval of child abuse; it reflects a Japanese tolerance for the right of a small minority of artists to express themselves freely by creating illustrated material that many observers will find offensive.