An update on the Japanese importation side of porn:
In 2006 the laws were changed (PDF; see note 1 on page 2) so that the Customs Law/Customs Duties Law (関税法, "Kanzei Hou"), Law No. 61 of 1954 (specifically Article 69, paragraph 11 (第六十九条の十一)), became the
governing regulation which
forbids the importation of pornography.
(Thanks to AnimeNations's sazaemon for pointing this out. Unfortunately, while I found a full copy of the 1997 version, I was unable to dig up a translated copy of the up-to-date law—only the partial Customs version linked above.)
While researching the update, I came across
this article; I have yet to check to see if I can access it at one of the local college libraries, but I found the abstract rather amusing in its bluntness:
Quote:
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This essay serves as an historical introduction to the problem of film censorship in Japan, a country which, despite an often liberal sexual history, continues to impose baffling and even irrational censorship standards on both its domestic and imported cinema. However, whereas sexual censorship in the West is often the result of religious dogmatism, Japanese film censorship may in fact revolve around political struggles whose import is not the censoring of offensiveness per se, but is rather authoritarianism's basic yet desperate desire to assert itself in an increasingly liberal political climate. Furthermore, Japanese censorship has had the unique side effect of creating safe spaces of sexual fantasy (for children, for example) that most countries, in what is in fact a greater form of censorship, refuse to create at all.
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