A slippery slope to kiddie porn

By Geoff Bottting
The Japan Times - Cyzo (December)
Sunday, Dec. 9, 2007
Source: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20071209t2.html

With her long hair, erotic poses and skimpy outfits that leave little to the imagination, Aira Mihana is a bona-fide sex symbol.

But Aira, who appears in a number of popular books, magazines and DVDs, is also 13 years old.

She's known as a "U-15 idol," in other words, a sexy female model under the age of 15. And she's not alone. The U-15 market is made up of dozens of girls in their pre- and early teens who are seen in photos and videos dressed in lingerie and G-string bikinis, often in semi-erotic situations.

Aira, for instance, created U-15 history last year when she became the first idol of elementary-school age to be seen pictured wearing a "T-back," a thong-type bikini. A magazine titled "Moecco Vol. 10" even features girls aged 7-9 posing in bikinis.

And the people who buy this stuff? Nearly all are adult men.

The authorities seem to have tolerated the industry, though just barely, over the last few years, as U-15 products have proliferated and their production standards have progressively been raised, Cyzo notices.

Yet on Oct. 16, that tolerance appeared to snap. Police arrested four employees of Shinkosha, the U-15 industry's biggest publisher, on child prostitution and pornography charges.

When Tokyo district prosecutors got the case, however, they took a softer line.

"While the DVDs qualify as child pornography, we have determined that compared to magazines and other materials being sold, the pornographic content is not very high," they told the media. Thus, the suspects were indicted on the less serious charge of breaching the Child Welfare Law on Nov. 6.

Some people in the industry have taken umbrage with what they see as the police's heavy-handed approach toward Shinkosha.

"There's no way that it's child pornography," says a woman who goes by the name of Kotomi, who is one of the industry's pioneers. She's also the mother and manager of U-15 starlet Asuka Izumi, who has worked extensively with Shinkosha.

Even so, the case has come as a shock to many others in the U-15 industry, according to a number of sources who speak to the magazine. So are the authorities preparing finally to crack down?

The answer isn't clear. When Cyzo contacts a number of Shinkosha's competitors, all refuse to comment directly on the case. The authorities also keep mum on details.

Nevertheless, several U-15 producers have already reacted to the Shinkosha arrests by toning down their content and generally playing it safe. One publisher has recently suspended sales of three of its most racy DVDs.

And an industry source says: "Some are faking the ages, like making girls 18 and over appear to be 12 or 13."

Meanwhile, the industry, which over the years has been grappling with fuzzy definitions over what exactly constitutes kiddie porn, is closely watching the Shinkosha case and waiting for its outcome to provide a bit of guidance.

As Kosuke Ochiai of Layfull Co., another publisher of U-15 content, explains: "The industry has tended to exercise self-restraint when it comes to extreme content, and I'm not sure whether that's the correct approach. . . . We can only guess where the line can and cannot be crossed. True, there are some excessive aspects of this industry. I think we all need to start to do something about this issue."

The Japan Times
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