What is it with the Japanese and young schoolgirls?

[smiling_bandit]

Dont’ forget that Manga was a(and to this day stioll is) heavily influenced by Disney’s legendary films. I’d say that did affect Manga depictions, to the extent of idealizing certain skintones and features rarely foudn in Japan. Of course, this reinforces the historical feminity of features much admired in Japan, so it all flows together.

[Giles]

@Sage_Rat

More importantly is that nearly all anime and manga centers on high schoolers. But given that this is the core market for these products, that’s really not all that big a mystery.

I wouldn’t say “nearly all”, but the high-school age group is certainly a large part of the market.

[Argent_Towers]

I think that the nose is the most defining characteristic of a face. The eyes, eyebrows, lips and chin are important, as is the distance between the nose and mouth and the space between the eyes, but the nose, being right in the center of the face, is pretty much the defining feature of it. And in anime and manga no feature is drawn in such an un-Japanese way as the nose is. And that pointed nose is, by definition, a European feature. You can examine the noses of every racial group under the sun, but you will not find this type of nose on anybody who is not at least partially of white European ancestry.

Ironically, I read an article about racist anti-Korean cartoons in Japan, and it showed various racist Japanese cartoons; in them, the Japanese were uniformly depicted as European (i.e. the way they are shown in anime and manga) while the Koreans were depicted the way the Japanese actually look in real life.

Incidentally I was just at the YMCA and on one of the television screens there was a news feature on Asians who are getting plastic surgery to try to look more European. The two most common procedures were altering the eyes, and making the nose more pointed. I saw a side profile shot of a Chinese guy who had had this kind of nose job done, and it looked very strange.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

Some people say that the Japanese have different social mores than we do. I think they’re just a bit twisted.

Perhaps it has something to do with Japanese religions (which don’t have the same sex taboos as other places), perhaps it has to do with the mysogynistic history of the country, perhaps the culture is too repressive. I dunno but their infatuation with school girl outfits is on a different scale than our cheerleader fetishes.

Its bad enough that middle aged women dress up as schoolgirls.

[Giles]

@col_10022

… Perhaps it has something to do with Japanese religions (which don’t have the same sex taboos as other places) …

That’s not the same thing as no sex taboos. In fact, compared with Western Europeans and North Americans, Japanese are much more inhibited about displays of affection in public: for example, it is not socially acceptable to kiss in public in Japan. Just because things happen in fictional media like anime and manga doesn’t mean they happen in the same way in real life.

[Strassia]

This is not new, nor is limited to fantasy. When I first went to Japan, in the mid 90s, the local English language paper had a story on schools wanting to ban girls from picking up “dates” on the side of the road in uniform because they felt it reflected poorly on the school. I can’t find a blog post from an American teacher in Japan who told how some of her students would go to clubs where men would leave pager numbers on the tables and the girls would call them and set up dates. They would go out with much older men in exchange for expensive dinners, clothing and other gifts.

I am not sure of the real reason, but one thing I have heard that makes sense to me is that because the schools start segregating after elementary school and there is such fierce pressure to do well in school, many men graduate college without having interacted socially with a female peer since they were 11. So, they look to younger school girls as they only ones they feel comfortable with.

Jonathan

[jakesteele]

I’m suprised no one has mentioned the vending machines where men can buy young girls used panties.

[Cesario]

@aldiboronti

Are they a nation of pedophiles?

I imagine their pedophile demographics are likely about the same as they are here in the west. They’ve just got more oportunity to be open about it without lynchings.

@aldiboronti

Sure, you can argue different tradition, Westerners shouldn’t judge, blah blah, but it really looks to me like middle-aged men lusting after barely pubescent schoolgirls. A pedo is a pedo is a pedo.

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

@aldiboronti

I just don’t get it. Is there no stigma attached to this at all?

Yes, but it’s more akin to the stygma attached to comic book geeks here in the west. Not the level of taboo we’ve got here in the west where you’ll get beaten to death over looking at a young girl longer than some busybody feels is appropriate.

@aldiboronti

Aren’t parents concerned for their young daughters?

The cultural tradition there is more focused on family honor. The “purity” of their daughters is a part of that, but not an end in and of itself. And they don’t seem to be deluding themselves into thinking that this sort of protectionism is for the girls’ benefit like we’ve managed to do here in the west.

@aldiboronti

If they did a Japanese To Catch A Predator would the audience be cheering on the predators?

Who do you cheer for on that show? Personally, I can’t wait for the day one of the people lured into that entrapment scheme demonstrates that he’s got a permit for a concealed firearm and decides he’d rather go down shooting than suffer what they were planning on doing with him.

@aldiboronti

Have the Japanese always had this fixation or is this a comparatively recent phenomenon? And BTW don’t get me wrong, I know there’s a large Western market for this school kiddie stuff too, but the difference is that in the West there certainly is a stigma attached to it.

Ironically, western stygma helped push things in that direction in Japan. Censorship laws imposed on the Japanese government after World War II by the US prohibited the depiction of pubic hair in their animation. The intent was to ban sexually explicit material in general, but the ones writing the act were too prudish to actually say what they meant, and as a result, the obvious loophole was exploited by the Japanese porn industry. This led to a massive influx of lolicon material. (Incidentally, those same censorship laws are what led to the prevalence of tentacle rape in hentai, since showing a penis was likewise banned.)

[Wesley_Clark]

@jakesteele

I’m suprised no one has mentioned the vending machines where men can buy young girls used panties.

pinkbox?

[DSeid]

An article of interest to this discussion.

Currently, not only are visuals with pubic hair and exposed genitalia present, but available are visual depictions of hard-core sexual encounters which include bestiality, sadomasochism, necrophilia and incest; the characters involved may be adults, children or both and they can be in manga as well as in adult reading materials. There is a “Child Welfare Law” in Japan which prohibits child prostitution. However, there are no specific child pornography laws in Japan and SEM depicting minors are readily available and widely consumed. …

… We hypothesized that the increase in pornography, without age restriction and in comics, if it had any detrimental effect, would most negatively influence younger individuals. Just the opposite occurred. The number of juvenile offenders dramatically dropped every period reviewed from 1,803 perpetrators in 1972 to a low of 264 in 1995; a drop of some 85% (Table 1). The number of victims also decreased particularly among the females younger than 13 (Table 2). In 1972, 8.3% of the victims were younger than 13. In 1995 the percentage of victims younger than 13 years of age dropped to 4.0%.

In 1972, 33.3 % of the offenders were between 14-19 years of age; by 1995 that percentage had decreased to 9.6%. Thus, over the period in question, there was a major shift in the proportion of victims and offenders from the younger categories to older categories. …

… It has been said that “pornography historically has been an integral part of Japanese culture” (Abramson & Hayashi, 1984). It is more true to say that erotic and fertility themes have been a traditional part of Japanese culture. Indeed religious shrines, ribald stories and both suggestive and explicit art have incorporated sexual icons and representations without shame and without the sin aspect associated with sex in the West. Traditionally these views of sex were in keeping with cultural or Confucian themes seen as enhancing family solidarity through child bearing and as a form of sex education (Abramson & Hayashi, 1984) and a way to enjoy the “good life.”

This attitude essentially remained with the people even with the modernization of Japan ushered in with the 1868 Meiji Restoration. The government of the Meiji era, to enhance respect from the West, began to modify Japan’s attitudes toward sex by adopting some of the West’s comparatively restrictive and conservative mores. For example, the then common practices of nudity and mixed bathing, were newly forbidden in public bath houses (Dore, 1958). This ordinance was actually randomly enforced and basically only in the major cities. But this was a small part of the Meiji government’s plan which came to be called wakon-yoosai (Japanese spirit and Western technology); a plan to develop and strengthen the nation by melding Western knowledge and technology with the Japanese spirit and culture (Hijirida & Yoshikawa, 1987).

During World War II many sexual restrictions were relaxed in Japan as they were in the West. Following the war, the United States’ forces occupying Japan imposed Western ideas of morality and law. The Japanese slowly came to adopt some of these ideas and practices. The wakon-yoosai attitude reemerged (Hijirida & Yoshikawa, 1987). Negative ideas of pornography, foreign to Japanese culture, were accepted and particularly applied to visual depictions since they were the ones most likely recognized and thereby criticized by Westerners. Little attention was given to written SEM since foreigners would be unlikely to read Japanese and thus would not notice and criticize these (Abramson & Hayashi, 1984). Other visible sex related matters were bent to Western ways. Prostitution, previously legal and accepted, for instance, was declared illegal in 1958 and separate-gender toilets and public baths began to replace the ubiquitous uni-sex facilities. Interestingly, while visual depictions of erotic themes were increasingly restricted, written pornography was slowly becoming more prevalent, more risqué and more fetishistic in tone. This was seen by some as a liberating reaction to the restraints of both Confucian feudalism and Western morality (Kuro, 1954). These were the laws and situation that basically existed in 1972, the starting date of our study.

In the ensuing years, sexually explicit materials, first gradually and then in the late 1980s and into the 1990s rapidly increased in prevalence. The years 1990 and 1991 seemed a watershed. Major shifts developed in how much pornography was produced and how the obscenity laws were interpreted. Fewer materials were being charged as obscene and even fewer convictions recorded. Once more this was similar to findings elsewhere. In Denmark the repeal of the ban on pornographic literature in 1967 was a consequence of provocative publishers producing and distributing to a waiting market and increasingly permissive court rulings (Kutchinsky, 1973b). In Japan the production and relaxation of control seemed to occur simultaneously; not one obviously causing the other.

The types of pornography available in Japan is also of interest relative to sex crime. The SEM produced caters to every taste and fetish and is typically much more aggressive and violent than that seen in the United States. And there are rarely enforced age restrictions in the purchase of or posing for these materials. This was essentially similar to the situation in Denmark (Kutchinsky, 1978). Kutchinsky further found that while the available SEM increasingly became fetish oriented and aggressive, such materials were not necessarily more often used. It appeared to remain a minor portion of the pornography available. In Denmark, Kutchinsky (1978, pp. 114) estimated hard core sadomasochistic materials and the like comprised no more than approximately 2% of all obtainable. Winick (1985) found about the same among U.S. materials. Giglio (1985) argued that Kutchinsky’s data may not be applicable considering a climate where violent pornography may be more prevalent. While we did not analyze in detail the pornographic materials in Japan for sadomasochistic or violent content it appears from inspection that such content is certainly much higher in Japan than in the U.S.A. or elsewhere. …

… Japan has the lowest number of reported rape cases and the highest percentage of arrests and convictions in reported cases of any developed nation.

So no they do not seem to be a nation of pedophiles. Their censorship history is different though.

[JR_Brown]

@Argent_Towers

I think that the nose is the most defining characteristic of a face. The eyes, eyebrows, lips and chin are important, as is the distance between the nose and mouth and the space between the eyes, but the nose, being right in the center of the face, is pretty much the defining feature of it. And in anime and manga no feature is drawn in such an un-Japanese way as the nose is. And that pointed nose is, by definition, a European feature. You can examine the noses of every racial group under the sun, but you will not find this type of nose on anybody who is not at least partially of white European ancestry.

Yeah, well, I disagree, and I’d bet the majority of manga artists do too; I’ve read a couple of Japanese manuals for aspiring shoujo manga artists (in translation), and they all say explicitly that the defining feature of a face is the eyes, and secondarily the mouth, and don’t mention noses at all. From my manga reading, I’d say less accomplished and/or more stylized artists draw one style of nose, period. More accomplished or realistic artists have one nose for use on all “attractive” characters, and only draw different noses on ugly/fat/comical characters.

[aldiboronti]

@ShibbOleth

Definitely, they’re all pædophiles. It’s not even possible that the attraction has anything to do with regression to a safer, more innocent time in their sexual development, say, when the males in question were barely pubescent and just beginning to notice girls in school girl uniforms. That’s inconceivable.

Great! I’ll try that one on the judge if I ever get caught banging a 14-year old. “I was yearning for a more innocent time in my sexual development, Your Honor.” That’ll go down well, I’m sure.

And to Cesario: excellent and most informative post! My ignorance is fought on this one and I’m grateful to you.

[JR_Brown]

“… Japan has the lowest number of reported rape cases and the highest percentage of arrests and convictions in reported cases of any developed nation.”

Yeah, but they also have painfully low report rates for rape, on the order of 10% overall, and even lower for cases involving assault by friends or family members.

[DSeid]

@JR_Brown

“… Japan has the lowest number of reported rape cases and the highest percentage of arrests and convictions in reported cases of any developed nation.”

Yeah, but they also have painfully low report rates for rape, on the order of 10% overall, and even lower for cases involving assault by friends or family members.

I am not sure that America has a much better percentage of reported rape. Depends on whose numbers you believe but 16% is one quoted figure. Thing is most rape is not rape by a stranger. In any case, even accepting that 40% of rapes are reported in America and only 10% of them are reported in Japan, you still have the simple fact that the [20X](http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~ad361896/anne/cease /rapestatisticspage.html) greater reported rape rate in America makes the real rate still at least 5X greater in America.

[Mojo_Pin]

What is it with westerners and most-menopausal grandmothers?
Wait…

[Freudian_Slit]

@Argent_Towers

I think that the nose is the most defining characteristic of a face. The eyes, eyebrows, lips and chin are important, as is the distance between the nose and mouth and the space between the eyes, but the nose, being right in the center of the face, is pretty much the defining feature of it. And in anime and manga no feature is drawn in such an un-Japanese way as the nose is. And that pointed nose is, by definition, a European feature. You can examine the noses of every racial group under the sun, but you will not find this type of nose on anybody who is not at least partially of white European ancestry.

That nose doesn’t look all that pointed to me. It looks pretty blunt.