News from the censorship front

Even with the Tokyo hijitsuzai seishounen reform proposal on hold for a while, the proponents of regulation have been keeping pretty busy. Before turning to the second part of the ongoing clarification post, I'd like to mention a couple of important news tidbits that seem to have received little attention on the English Internet.

• The “Commission for the Prevention of the Circulation of Child Pornography” is a consultative body established last June by the Internet Association of Japan upon recommendations of the National Police Agency, comprising representatives of some Japanese ISPs, of companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, as well as some of the usual suspects (Gotō Keiji and Miyamoto Junko of ECPAT/STOP, Nakai Yūma of the Japanese Committee for UNICEF, etc.). It is not a government entity, and officials from the National Police Agency and the Ministry of Internal Affairs only sit on the board as observers.

  Last Thursday (March 25th), it produced a report on ISP-level blocking of “child pornography” content, based on a secret URL blacklist similar to the one in the UK (which once blocked Wikipedia) or the one under discussion in Australia. There are serious doubts even within the commission regarding the legality of this type of blocking (it would likely infringe on users' legally-guaranteed rights to communication privacy), or the possibility to put it in place at non-prohibitive costs to the providers. Nevertheless, chairwoman Noguchi Kyōko encouraged ISPs to disregard legal and technical concerns and go forward with implementing it and putting the blacklist together. Some of those ISPs seem prepared to proceed. Other proposed measures include censoring search results from major search engines. Google and Yahoo apparently have a “cooperative stance” on this matter, in interesting contrast to their criticism of the Australian filter.

  One of the few news reports in English on the subject, at the Japan Times Online, is an exercise in unashamed spin, conflating the issue with some random arrest over child molestation charges... They're not even trying.

• On Friday (March 26th), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan held an international symposium about the Convention on the Rights of the Child, co-organized with the Tokyo bureau of UNICEF (the real one) and the Japanese Committee for UNICEF (the fake/Agnes Chan one). There were three 90 minutes sessions over the afternoon, each one chaired by one of the three organizers.

  The Japanese Committee for UNICEF thoughtfully took advantage of its session to present its views on censorship and child pornography laws in Japan by inviting Gotō Keiji (the same ECPAT/STOP advisor and former police officer as in all of our previous stories...) to talk to an audience of Kasumigaseki bureaucrats, UN officials and foreign law enforcement. Such concerned parties as Japanese authors and publishers were obviously not invited, and were probably not expected to take heed of this presentation. At any rate, Gotō didn't make the slightest effort at painting a balanced picture. Unfortunately, at least one novelist was among the attendees, taking an almost word-for-word transcript of the talk. And it's pretty damning. Here's a full translation. Emphasis ours, editorial comments in blue between square brackets.

  Today, I will be talking about the problem of child pornography and child prostitution in Japan.

  First, a few words of personal history. I have long been keenly aware of how late we were as country in tackling the problem of child pornography and child prostitution in Japan. Foreign police would find child pornography sent from the Japanese Internet and come to me as the point of contact for such matters. Until 1999, there was nothing I could do except reply, “Sorry, we can't crack down on this stuff” or “we have no law against child porn in Japan.”

  “Your country's insane.” I've been told as much by policemen from many countries. I have been an individual attendee to an international conference on child pornography on the Internet and all the time, people would point out how late Japan was in taking measures. The chair would introduce me as the “heroic man from the top child porn nation who would join us.” It was a very shameful experience.

  In 1999, we got our national law against child pornography, but from a worldwide perspective, it was incredibly lenient.

  According to opinion polls, many Japanese citizens agree that this has to change, but the government who must revise the law won't make a move. Child pornography, child prostitution, child abuse, terrible violations of children's rights: our greatest problem, in short, is that the need to make progress on these fronts is not reflected in politics.

  There is some confusion in society about child pornography, so let me clear it up. It can happen that a 17 year-old gets naked to do gravure photographs. That sort of confusion. But today's pornography extends to infants! The girls aren't showing pretty smiles; in many cases, these are pictures of abuse. This proliferates across the Internet. Particularly in Japan, you can find this kind of pictures in comic books and video games. There's awful abuse inflicted in comic books and video games. Since comic books and video games, especially, have unfettered expression, people produce manga stuff, computer graphics, with depictions of children being raped, being gang raped by many adults, and shown as seemingly enjoying it.

  To the gentlemen coming from abroad today, let me tell you that 90% of Japanese people think that this material should not be tolerated [reference to an opinion poll of dubious methodological merit]. But as I said earlier. the government won't make a move. The production of child pornography involves sexual abuse. Once it has been put on the Internet, it circulates almost permanently, with children's faces uncovered. These child victims must continue to suffer even into adulthood. [Especially those in manga, right?]

  Some people argue that, while the production of child pornography is a crime, looking at child pornography isn't a crime, and shouldn't be regulated. That thinking won't fly abroad, but it does fly in Japan. That's the system in Japan today. No regard whatsoever for the feelings of child victims.

  As possession for personal use is not forbidden, photos containing child pornography circulate on the Internet. This causes considerable violation of children's human rights. Among G8 countries, Japan and Russia are the only one not outlawing this. Moreover, it is a great problem that CDs, comic books and computer graphics are out of scope of restrictions.

  Recently, we drew up an ordinance in Tokyo on this subject. That child pornography, just that horrible content, horrible comic books targetting children, we made a reform proposal saying that this material should be regulated, and putting such lenient restrictions on it that it shouldn't be sold to children. [That's either a plainfaced lie, or that Gotō guy really can't make a difference between the likes of Kodomo no jikan and real kiddie porn where infants are gang raped.]

  And yet, it was not approved by the Metropolitan Assembly. Due to worries expressed by the majority of political parties, including the Minshutō, it has been put in continued examination. I was involved in this proposal as a committee member. But it was stopped at the political level. Even though 90% of the population supports it, the Minshutō and others opposed it and it couldn't pass. In the Diet, too, the Jimintō and Kōmeitō proposed to outlaw “simple possession,” but the Minshutō objected. [Uhuh.]

  In the West, in Europe, in South Korea, so-called “blocking” measures have been taken to make sure that this material could not be viewed on the Internet. ISPs and the Ministry of Justice say that such measures are a hindrace to the quality of communications. It goes without saying, but we, on the other hand, hold the view that since it is about protecting children from abuse, it should be made legal, even if it means “hindering communications.”

  [Remaining of the talk was about child prostitution, not transcribed.]

  In short, Gotō explains that Japan should be ashamed of its laws, that it still produces piles of abusive child porn in the form of manga and games, that some of it is even made for children, and that almost everyone agrees that this should stop except for a tiny minority of sex-crazed perverts supported by the left-leaning Cabinet. That's how they see things. That's so far removed from reality that I don't really see how any kind of level-headed debate can occur with these people.

Speaking of level-headed debate, there was a two-hour long live broadcast on Nico nico douga yesterday evening on the hijitsuzai seishounen reform. Such fine people as Azuma Hiroki, Fujimoto Yukari and Shirata Hideaki were invited by Tsuda Daisuke and the Movement for the Internet Active Users to ponder the problem. Even though they all have made their stances pretty clear before through other channels, that's likely to be very thought-provoking discussions there. I wish I could say that after having watched the broadcast myself, but I was away at the time, so as a non-premium nico douga user (can't get the site to accept my credit card), I have to wait until the video is made publicly available somewhere else. If you get a chance to see it, do, and I'd love to hear about it.