I was on Google Trends the other day and stumbled upon something sick happening in Japan.
Not the Tony Hawk kind of sick.
The Jeffery Epstein kind of sick.
“The age of consent” was trending in Japan.
Many many red flags went up in my head.
I wanted to find out why, but the answers were not easy to digest. The first link I opened up was a 2022 bill calling for Japan to raise the age of consent from 13 to 16.
A proponent of the bill wrote:
"The age of consent in Japan has not changed since 1907, when the penal code was enacted. At that time, the average life expectancy of women was 44 years, and it was common for women to marry and have children at a young age. In society at that time, 13 was regarded as a reasonable age of consent.
The article continues: ‘Until around the year 2000, however, there was no strict legal control and prostitution by high school girls was common...The prostitution of high school girls was so alarming in late 1990’s that lawmakers thought that something had to be done about it and new laws and ordinances were enacted, and the police crackdown became extremely strict."
What’s going on and how is this accepted?
Japan’s age of consent is tied for the third-lowest in the world.
Angola, a country in Southern Africa, and the Philippines are the only countries with a lower age of consent at 12 years old. Some real sick shit, man.
The Philippines used to be 12, but following a relentless campaign by human rights activists, it was raised to 16 in March earlier this year.
So… for Japan being a first-world country, why is their age of consent still so low?
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly, but Japanese law keeps the age of consent intentionally opaque. Under the Juvenile Obscene Acts, passed in 1947, no one over the age of 14 can have sex with 13–14 year-olds. The minimum sentence for sex with any female under the age of 13 is five years.
However, 13 and 14-year-olds are permitted to give consent to each other. In short, the age of consent is so confusing in Japan that even their simplified chart makes no sense:
One top writer on Quora, who lived in Japan for several years, theorized that laws are kept deliberately ambiguous enough to allow those in power to get away with the confusing consent laws.
Either way, it’s baffling. Japan may have one of the lowest crime rates in the world, but some even attribute that to its cultural censorship of widespread sex crimes.
Japan’s sexualization of young girls
There is a common fetishization of young girls in Japan. JK (joshi kosei or “school girl”) services, which are like maid or hostess cafes but feature minors, are abundant and feed into this fantasy.
While many of these JK businesses are non-sexual — others are.
Japan was also one of the last countries to officially ban the possession of child porn. And anyone who’s watched anime is familiar with “kawaii” or cute, another hypersexual fetishization of young girls.
“High school girls are really into this ‘kawaii’ culture so they had to be cute,” said Japanese activist Yayoi Matsunaga in an article titled ‘Sexual assault in Japan: ‘Every girl was a victim.’
50% of young Japanese women have been molested on a train, many being underage — and that’s only what’s been reported. One writer in an article titled Japan’s “Not-So-Secret Shame” reports that over 95% of incidents of sexual violence are not reported in Japan.
These sexual crimes go unreported for a good yet dogmatic reason. Discussing rape is perceived as “embarrassing” in Japan and public opinion often sways towards blaming the victim rather than the attacker.
What’s next?
As British author Douglas Murray recently pointed out in an interview with Jordan Peterson, every country has a dark secret they hide outside in their shed. The more you distance yourself from this shed, the better your country stands. And the closer you are to opening it, the higher the probability of evil and chaos.
America’s dark secret is out.
We like to play with our belly buttons, and everyone knows about it.
Wait, was that our dark secret? I forget.
Anyway, Japan’s dark secret is being buried in the shed.
As foreigners, we perceive that everything is peachy there. Their economy, culture, anime and food cannot be beaten. Unfortunately, it enables this sinister issue of the sexualization of young girls to fall by the wayside. And it's not hard to imagine why…
Let me finish with, hey, man, I know we also sexualize the youth here in the West, but 13? That's too damn young! It's a question that needs to be addressed, and it should be discussed with the gravity it deserves. No more turning a blind eye.
Glad legislation is moving in the right direction.
Enjoy your weekend,
Isaiah
I was just in a shop speaking to a security guy about the financial situation and why we must use cash to keep it in the system. He went on to tell me he has two girls 8 years old, and a 12-year-old and we were discussing the care of young girls in the world. A father’s job is to show the daughter her value and the mother’s job is to show the child how to nurture herself. We have a responsibility to all young people. I had abuse by a father and in care age 9 under government care homes. I recently in 2020 stood up to the system in compensation for loss of dignity, time, interference with my own sense of self and the rest. Children need parents who are allies with healthy boundaries and not ownership. Proper care and consideration. It is odd to me how grown people even consider children as a sex object and do objectify and it is time it is spoken on the subject more publicly. I am not happy to know this and was very offended on the secrecy around the Epstein case and the royal cover up paying people off. We need to keep bringing awareness as humans. The suffering of being objectified and used for sex as a child has horrendous consequences to the child involved ... thirteen is a child. It takes a young boy or girl many years to understand who they are and generally even as late as twenty plus for many. Thanks for flagging this. I have a female group of 1400 ladies on meet up and hold a weekly meeting working on early abuse to alleviate the pain caused by adults who had an agenda. The problem we have are people at varying degrees of consciousness or lack thereof and we do need clear rules and guidelines for the entire world on this matter. It is tricky as belief systems play out heavily and paedophiles are a reality as with the trafficking of children and young people for sexual slavery. A minefield it is. Anyone in thier right mind would be fully aware of the complications and lack of care and respect interfering with 13 year olds and to age 16. I thinkage 16 this must be held by law globally to protect as many children as we can.