Biography
Seiya Morita https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8343-1265 lectures in Marxist political economy at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo and is a member of the Anti-Pornography and Prostitution Research Group. He is the translator of Catharine MacKinnon, David Harvey, and Sheila Jeffreys’s work into Japanese. His English-language academic work is published in Oriens Extremus, The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus, and Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence. Morita reads in English, Russian, Japanese, and German, and is an internationally recognized Trotsky studies expert.
Caroline Norma https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6836-2054 lectures in translation and interpreting at RMIT University in Melbourne and is a member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia. Her English-language academic work is published in Asian Studies Review, Women’s Studies International Forum, and Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence. Norma reads in Japanese and English and has expertise in the history of the comfort women, military prostitution, and the theorizing of Carole Pateman.
Abstract
In this article we describe pornography’s harms in Japan, which are known about from surveys and research, and from the outreach and consulting activities of Japanese feminist-abolitionist groups. Among these are the Anti-Pornography and Prostitution Research Group (APP) and People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence (PAPS). We then propose a renewed classification scheme for pornography’s harms that centrally considers the experiences of victims in Japan. Lastly, we consider various legal approaches to addressing the myriad harms we describe and suggest possibilities for a new legal strategy. The article’s research comes from Japanese-language materials produced by the above-mentioned activist groups, as well as media reports of pornography-related crimes and court cases. Our aim in this article is to isolate each category of pornography’s harms so that individually tailored legal and public policy solutions might be tactically proposed and campaigned for, so that gains against the pornography industry can be made to the point where its operating environment as a whole becomes threatened.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Morita, Seiya and Norma, Caroline (2021) "Pornography, Its Harms, and a New Legal Strategy: Research and Experience in Japan," Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence: Vol. 6: Iss. 2, Article 3. https://doi.org/10.23860/dignity.2021.06.02.03
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