Japan, Porn and the lack of Rape

In our lectures it was mentioned that the Japanese people are surrounded by pornography. In Japan it is very easy to find sexually explicit material just about anywhere that they go. According to this study from Hawaii University, phone booths in commercial areas (of Japan) and city newspapers contain advertisements for sexual liaisons of every sort. The Japanese are extremely exposed to pornography and some people believe this will increase the amount of sex crimes in the country.

Many feel that this increase of pornography and its content have increased the amount of rape and sex crimes in the Japanese culture. The study says that during the year of 1994 “approximately 14,000 “adult” videos were being made yearly in Japan compared with some 2500 in the United States”. Clearly there is much more content readily available to people in Japan. Most people would believe that this abundance of pornography would cause more aggression in its watchers toward the opposite sex and that sex crimes and rape would be increasing. Those people are dead wrong. The study took note that the increase of pornography started around 1972 and the followed it at the way to 1995. They then took the data regarding sex crimes from that time period and found that rape has steadily decreased. “There were 4677 reported cases with 5464 offenders in 1972 to the 1995 incidence of 1500 cases with 1,160 offenders; a dramatic reduction in incidence of some two-thirds”. Sexual assault and public indecency have also decreased during this time period.

Even with the abundance of pornography in Japan that is available to juveniles there has still be a decrease in juvenile sexually crimes. This study seems to go against what we were told in our lecture for our own culture. We were shown data and told that more pornography in general equals more rape. Perhaps it is the difference between the two cultures that causes such a different response to pornography in regards to rape. However “these findings (from the Japan study) are similar to, but are even more striking than, those reported with the rise of sexually explicit materials in Denmark, Sweden and West Germany”.

How is there reduction in some countries but a increase in our culture?

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