These days the Japanese parliament has begun to discuss a bill to punish anyone who secretly takes sexually explicit or suggestive photos or videos, or uses them for pornographic purposes. The proposal is part of a broader reform of the laws on sexual offenses that is under discussion and is expected to be approved next June. In Japan it is a very sensitive issue due to some cultural habits and because there is currently no national law that establishes how to handle these cases.
The bill forbids to take, store and circulate photos of a person’s genitals without their knowledge or consent. It establishes that it is an offense to retouch photographs without consent in such a way that a person appears to be engaged in sexual acts, just as it would be an offense to film girls and boys in sexually suggestive poses without plausible motivation. If the proposal passes, those who commit crimes of this type could risk up to three years in prison or a maximum fine of 3 million yen, just under 20,000 euros.
At present, people accused of these crimes in Japan can be tried under local laws on disturbing the peace, with penalties varying from province to province. However, there is no law establishing the procedure to be adopted at national level, which is present in other countries such as South Korea or Singapore, where there is the risk of sentences up to a maximum of five and two years respectively, as well as fines.
The new rules were proposed following pressure from public opinion, which for some time had been asking for stricter laws for this type of crime, which has become much more frequent due to the widespread use of smartphones.
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According to local media, in Japan it often happens that girls and boys who work as models are photographed in sexually provocative attitudes and it also happens that the images of male and female athletes are used for pornographic purposes. However, the new Japanese law would not cover photos of athletes in sportswear during competitions, with the exception of those taken with infrared devices, which expose the body through clothing.
Data released by the national police say that in 2021 alone, people arrested for secretly photographing someone had been 5,019, about three times those arrested in 2010. survey carried out last March by a trade union in the country’s air transport sector, it also showed that around 70 per cent of flight attendants said that someone had secretly taken their photos.
The proposal is part of a broader overhaul of the law governing sexual crimes, which among other things aims to broaden the definition of rape and extend the statute of limitations for this offence. Currently, in fact, to prove that a rape has been committed, it is not enough to demonstrate that consent was denied, but it is also necessary to prove that the person who committed it used “violence and intimidation” to prevent those who suffer it from resisting. If the reform under discussion passes, rape would be a crime even if a person is forced to take alcohol or drugs or undergoes a form of psychological control. The statute of limitations would go from 10 to 15 years.
Furthermore, in February a commission of the Japanese Ministry of Justice proposed to raise the age of consent from 13 to 16, which is the threshold below which it is considered that a minor or a minor cannot have consented to the sexual act : Japan is the state with the lowest age of consent among the G7 countries.