In the beginning of the semester, I have mentioned Japanese porn as seen in the Museum of Sex in New York City.  The explicit Japanese pornography was also mentioned in couple of lectures.  The photos provided on the museum’s website showed the rape of women as pornography and one would imagine that such imagery was rather acceptable.  Ironically, Japan was rather strict about what they published and did not publish between 1960’s and 1990s.  For instance, frontal nudity was prohibited to appear on film in Japan until 1986.  The American college sex textbook Sexual Decisions (Diamond & Karlen, 1980) was republished in a Japanese edition in 1985 (Diamond & Karlen, 1985). Depictions of sexual positions and other images were allowed only after the book was edited to reduce the number of illustrations with pubic hair or exposed genitalia. It is rather interesting how the Japanese pornography depicting drawings of rape of women dates back to several hundred years ago but the society is conservative when it comes to displaying pornographic film and photography.  Once again, this clearly underlines the fact that “pornography” is still not well defined and is subjective. 

Starting in the 1990s, pornography began to be accepted in Japan and the following industries became popular: strip theaters, "love hotels" (rooms available by the hour), "adult" sex shops and "soap lands" ("massage" or "shampoo" parlors known to offer sexual services). These industries are not only popular in Japan but many Asian ladies have been trafficked to other countries, such as the United States where industries like the  “soap lands” are also present.  This is also interesting because in one of the lectures, Professor Halavais talked about how the United States can ban pornography on their websites but it has no control over websites in other countries.  Thus, although prostitution is illegal in New York State, many of the international communities such as China town thrive in sex tourism and are a popular in the industry of “soap lands."

Also, interestingly enough with the increase of pornography exposure in Japan, the rate of rape of underage victims has decreased and the number of underage sex offenders has also dropped.  This is important to note because the feminist perspective in the U.S. is that pornography does the opposite- increase violence toward women.  "The incidence of rape has progressively declined from 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." (http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/online_artcls/pornography/prngrphy_ovrvw.html)