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Japanese age of consent (misinterpreted fact or blatant lie?)

Who actually used the term jailbait in such an innocent way? Whoo-boy!

Ummm, a lot of people? Whoo-boy? Unless you think that anything involving sex is dirty and perverse, and therefore not "innocent", than I guess nobody. And that's the whole point, there's a difference between having sex with a mature and capable individual (innocent), and manipulating or forcing someone into sex using their lack of knowledge, vulnerabilities, or what have you (not innocent). Of course the law simply defines age (18 where I live), therefore the term "jailbait". "They're under 18, don't get involved with that, that's jailbait". This can be used even when the younger individual is the one attempting to initiate a relationship, therefore likely capable and knowledgeable (unless they have been abused in the past or present, a different explanation for their behavior, but i think that's something you can generally see).

And to answer the OPs question, it was probably an older poster, or just using out of date facts. I don't remember the exact date, but it wasn't too terribly long ago that there was no official age of consent in Japan. I saw a similar poster back in High School, except it mentioned that Japan USED to not have an official age of consent, and that it is now 13. Of course even that is misleading.
 
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As I stated, age of consent laws are designed to prevent minors from being coerced or forced into a sexual relationship without consequences for the older, supposedly more responsible party. This is the purpose for all age of consent laws, the only variance is where we set the bar. In your state it's 18, in some places it's much lower. You said "I'm not saying age of consent laws shouldn't exist, but there should be some sense in the way they are enforced," is that to say that you think the law should simply be enforced on a case-by-case basis? If so, what good is the law?

What if the age of consent were 12, or 9... or the age of first menses or ejaculation? At what point is someone truly capable of understanding sex and its implications? It's different for everyone, just like the point at which we all reach physical maturity, so some lawmakers have set the bar at what they considered a reasonable level to expect everyone to be both mentally and physically capable of making that choice for themselves.

If you don't like it, you have three options: Deal with it, change the law, or argue about it on the internet.
 
I typed out a very long reply that got erased because I was not signed in when I clicked submit. I'm not rewriting it, so w/e, just pretend.
 
America's youth are now too lackadaisical to bother typing out in full their one-word philosophy of life?

This is disheartening.
 
The way that age varies by prefecture seems a lot like how it varies by state in the US. Since English Wikipedia breaks down the numbers by location it makes me wonder if Japanese Wikipedia might have done similar. How many prefectures are there?
 
The way that age varies by prefecture seems a lot like how it varies by state in the US. Since English Wikipedia breaks down the numbers by location it makes me wonder if Japanese Wikipedia might have done similar. How many prefectures are there?
The age is 18 in 46 of 47 prefectures. Only Nagano prefecture doesn't have any ordinance about the age.
青少年保護育成条例 - Wikipedia
 
In Spain the age of consent is 14, so below that anyone can call in on the older member of the relationship/sex encounter to Social Services and they will be judged by the law. If one of the members is between 14 and 18 and the other is over 18 you can still sue him for sexual abuse, corruption of a minor or whatever and it will be judged as an individual case, just like it would be with 2 overage people with the difference that the person being sued can be charged with a lot more things when the other is a minor.

Am I explaining myself good enough? :hilarious:
 
"May or may nto be able to" wow... that's not very clear, is it? Is there a website where official laws are posted or anything? Wikipedia doesn't seem very reliable when it comes to this stuff.
No sense harping on Wiki. Not even quotations of the law are much help, since some other law might counter or overlap. (Only in Japan does local law trump federal law!) The entire subject is a ridiculous mess where we have entire threads dedicated to the topic, and still can't come out with a clear conclusion. And what is at stake? Get it right and you are fine, normal, happy and laid, and so is your partner. Get it wrong by one day and you are a low-life, degenerate scum bag and belong in a prison cell (or worse!), and your partner is traumatized for life. Its all sheer madness, and we can hardly blame Wiki for not being able to provide perfect clarity and sense to it. Wiki is as good a source as any other really, on this or any other topic.
 
So in 46 ou 47 prefectures you can't have sex with a 13 to 17 years old girl/boy if you're older ? Excuse me, I don't know for the law, but do you really think that law is enforced ? You see tens and tens of relationships involving teachers and student in manga, and students are typically between 13 and 18: do you think there would be that much representations of this kind of relationships, if there weren't enough real cases ? Hey, not talking about hentai, which I hate by the way. I'm talking about your usual romance manga.
My bet is, that law isn't enforced in most cases, or is only when violence is concerned. Probably under 13 too, but that is another story ...
Law can't be applied uniformly in matter of human reationships. Those who don't think so, please get out your *** of your republican/French Revolutionary/universalist point of view. For millenia, justice was done on a personal, or ethnic basis, and that system has its cons and its pros. Its pros being it takes in account the cultural background of people, the way they are meant to behave, to judge them. Fairly logical, to my own opinion.
I would like to add something else: why, when talking about sexuality, everyone think (it's obvious) about pregnancy and stuff? Not everything in sex is coït, sexual intercourse etc. You actually don't have to be gay or lesbian to like better the rest. And the rest is ... without consequences, except for sexually transmissible illnesses, which are anyway easily avoidable, as long as you have a tiny "technical" knowledge, and if what you want is definitely not to reproduce ... which is the motivation of MOST sexual acts, if not, we wouldn't bother that much with contraceptives right ?

Sorry for the "technical" part, but when it can hugely shape one's opinion on a national habit/social practice, we can't help but clarify things bluntly. Shall I add that it is well-known that in the past, relationships between senpai and kohai were common, and even a great educative incentive ? And that girls and boys are culturaly separated ? It means the "senpai" you're interacting with, for all odds, is a same-sex person. So yeah, homosexuality, or better, pederasty, as anthropologicaly that's the term, was common in pre-defeat Japan. That obviously explain why they are so "leniant" with these questions of sexuality and age of consent. They just don't see the problem, and I doubt old people who use to live things now officialy prohibited, consider they have been "raped", "violented", "traumatized" ... They will talk you about "beauty", "love", "respect", "magic" etc, if they ever talk to you, because they are likely to feel our fundamental inability as repressed/so-called-sexually-liberated/feminist Westerner, to compute what they could tell us. Stop judging people on behalf of your narrow-mindedness ... especially in matter of sex, for heaven's sake !
I ain't saying to break the law, so there's no way "legality" ( or even less "morality") shall interfere with free thinking.

For like-minded people, especially Asian, you can mail me, I'm looking for getting to know you.
 
You see tens and tens of relationships involving teachers and student in manga, and students are typically between 13 and 18: do you think there would be that much representations of this kind of relationships, if there weren't enough real cases ?
By that logic, there must be at least five huge space robots with laser cannons in the real world.
 
So in 46 ou 47 prefectures you can't have sex with a 13 to 17 years old girl/boy if you're older ?
You seem to be misunderstanding. The law doesn't prohibit relations between lovers. The Supreme Court gave a ruling that it's applied to forced cases.

本条例(福岡県青少年保護育成条例)一〇条一項(当時)の規定にいう『「淫行」とは、広く青少年に対する性行為一般をいうものと解すべきでなく、青少年を誘惑し、威迫し、欺罔し又は困惑させる等その心身の未成熟に乗じた不当な手段により行う性交又は性交類似行為のほか、青少年を単に自己の性的欲望を満足させるための対象として扱つているとしか認められないような性交又は性交類似行為』をいうものと解するのが相当である。
けだし、右の「淫行」を広く青少年に対する性行為一般を指すものと解するときは、「淫らな」性行為を指す「淫行」の用語自体の意義に添わないばかりでなく、例えば婚約中の青少年又はこれに準ずる真摯な交際関係にある青少年との間で行われる性行為等、社会通念上およそ処罰の対象として考え難いものを含むこととなつて、その解釈は広きに失することが明らかであり、また、前記「淫行」を目にして単に反倫理的あるいは不純な性行為と解するのでは、犯罪の構成要件として不明確であるとの批判を免れないのであつて、前記の規定の文理から合理的に導き出され得る解釈の範囲内で、前叙のように限定して解するのを相当とする。
淫行条例 - Wikipedia

Incidentally, Nagano Prefecture made a similar ordinance in July 2016, so it's 47 of 47 now.
 
You're right, there are. These are easy symbolic representations of real world mechanized humans, people so rigid they are seen as robots. Though it can also represent superhumans in a good sense, like superman. The difference between represented relationships and represented robots, is that when you read stories about robots, or including mechas, you have to be the dumbest of the dumb to take it at face value...
Why aren't people then, buying lots of manga about big moon-sized ducks ? Because it would be meaningless, whereas robots are easy symbols to use, and given the story, the concrete meaning is easy to pick for the reader.
According to you, what would mangas portraying students-teachers relationships be about, if not students-teachers relationships? If you think mangas or cultural production has no utter meaning than face value, and have no functions other than to entertain us ? I am saying, if they do entertain us, it is rarely for nothing, they are instead echoing real social or inner psychological issues. Art doesn't entertain by operation of the Holy Ghost.

Thanks toritoribe, that was exactly what I expected. So you read Japanese. So from the moment you are 13, you can chose your lover to be whoever you want, right ? I read the Child Welfare Act translated, on Child Welfare Act
I could only find a prohibition of "obscene acts" on children. From the moment they consider that love can be possible from the age of 13, including with sex, the federal law is indeed the only one to be taken in account for the AoC.
But I couldn't neither find mention of relationships between people of authority(teachers, mainly), and children below 18 ... does that mean those relationship are downright legal ? Or need I look elsewhere ?
 
In all likelihood I didn't get the subtleties, as for me ( a French guy ) the Japanese system seemed closer to the US system than the French one. In France, you don't "local" laws depending on the prefecture. "Prefectures" have considerably less administrative autonomy here. Anyway, I got the point I wanted, so thanks for the info. In fact, I needed to work on a website, and I didn't know what I could say, and what I couldn't, depending on the actual law. Now, it's clear.
 
Why oh why would we have to consider love hotels or RELATIVELY low age of consent perverse?!

I find the Japanese views and attitude to sex quite refreshing actually. We tend to judge it as perverse only because of the centuries of Christianism that equates sex with sin and guilt.
 
Thanks for this. i was a bit taken aback by reading all these messages throwing around the term "perverse' and "obscene." So judgmental! Sure, vulnerable people need to have some protection against those willing to do things which can be traumatic for them for selfish reasons. But this discussion itself seems perverse to me. For one thing, the word sex appears over and over, while the word love, and even affection, are absent. There is more to life than the physical. But then, maybe I'm old-fashioned (A senior citizen). Has sentiment been killed by this age of gross pornographic representations in music, film, social media... What a shame.
 
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