I have really invested a lot of time into this question. I am referring to mainly Lolicon/Shotacon and CLSD since these primarily have their origins in Japan.
Japan quite literally has the biggest industry for pedophilic outlets in the world, so what would happen if all of that just disappears? I feel like that worldwide legislation and western influence are starting to affect the availability and production of such media within Japan. Especially since Pixiv does not allow receiving payments on Loli/Shota works anymore (statistically 1/3 of japanese citizens visit Pixiv monthly!).
The biggest Lolicon magazine also issued a statement recently that they are cutting down production by 50% (used to be a monthly magazine, now every 2nd month). It is important to make society and companies aware of CSAM, but I feel like that works of fiction are starting to get hit as collateral worse than ever before.
Another blow could go towards the merchandise industry/websites due to the new DSA (Digital Services Act) which will come into full effect in February 2024. Illegal material has to be deleted, or else access will be blocked. AFAIK it is enough if one EU-states law is being broken for it to be blocked. Yahoo Japan has blocked all access from within the EU due to GDPA, so similar stuff will most likely happen with Doujinshi / Figure / websites. Making it impossible for the average person to use any of their services.
It is sadistic, inhumane and impossible to fully regulate the sexual satisfaction through fictitious outlets. I genuinely do not understand. Every measure against such outlets is useless. It does not work on other fictitious works, so it will never work on something that is meant to please a very core human desire; sexuality. It is ironic that those who blame japan for not banning pedophilic outlets are the ones who are most likely actively putting children at risk.
I get what you’re going for with that title, but there’s a LOT more to Japan than just lolicon/shotacon. On the one hand, if Japan never existed we’d be robbed of their unique culture (art, language, cuisine, technology, etc.). On the other hand, I’m sure all the nations Japan colonized would’ve been MUCH better off if Japan never existed (genocide of indigenous Ainu and Ryukyuan peoples, Annexation of Korea, Invasion of Manchuria, “comfort women”, Rape of Nanking, Unit 731, Bataan Death March, Sook Ching, Pearl Harbor, Kantō Massacre, Manila Massacre, Chichijima Incident, etc.).
Do you know how power vacuums work? It’s common naivety to point to any individual power as “evil”, and to think that all weaker nations are “good”. If any given powerful country did not exist, another will simply exist. As the Skyrim quote indicates: “What is life’s greatest illusion? Innocence, my brother.” And what maintains that illusion? Weakness. Power doesn’t corrupt. It just provides means to goals that were always there. Now, I could go off on a tangent about how this shows the idiocy of ancestral “reparations”, but that might be off-topic.
Never said anything about reparations. I agree that reparations are an idiotic concept. I’m simply pointing out that the world would probably be a better place had the various colonial empires (Japan included) simply minded their own business. Just because power vacuums exist doesn’t mean you need to do all this:
If these empires simply spread their influence via the sharing of information and technology, I’d have no problem with it. But an empire that builds itself by committing genocide, invasions, slavery, mass rape, human experiments, war crimes, surprise attacks, massacres, incidents of cannibalism, etc., I’m gonna declare evil and call them on it. The People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, etc. They’ve all got similar skeletons in their closets and continue to make… questionable decisions to this day. Japan is simply no different.
In the best of all possible worlds, yes, but like a magician’s bed of nails, if you can’t have no nails at all, it’s better to have many than few. For example, Russia prevented Mongolia from falling completely to China, ergo the divide between Inner and Outer Mongolia. France prevented Vietnam from falling to China. Because Germany was defeated, Tibet fell to China. There’s even a Brad Pitt movie about that:
