On Thanksgiving day 2006, a Japanese auto executive living in Michigan was quietly taken into custody on charges of molestation and possession of child pornography. Under a mountain of evidence discovered in a false ceiling in his home— both images he captured on his own and collected, “Right Man” (the meaning of the characters in his given name) pled guilty and lost everything. Pedophiles exist everywhere, but this was no ordinary perve. In fact, he was my ex and I was the American who brought him to the US.
It all began in 1980. Until that year I was a country bumpkin— an outdoor kid from rural Michigan raised to think young men married women their own age and together they grew in mutual adoration, through thick and thin, wrinkles, grey hair and all. Pollyanna as this might seem, it was at the time my dream. If I found the “right man,” someone who accepted me for me, I’d have a wonderful life.
I was just sixteen when I met my first husband. I had spent the summer in Tokyo on a youth exchange when on the way out I met a 22-year old Japanese college student headed to the US for study. As I recall, he was talking to a group of girls younger than I when I injected myself into the conversation. Two years later to the day I was his bride. I didn’t know it then, but at eighteen, I was already “over the hill”— too old for him.
Loving the culture as I did and seeking my husband’s approval, I sought to be the best Japanese wife. During my “bonsai years,” as I call them, I was pruned and shaped by shame and fits of violence– my speech, dress, and mannerisms effectively regressing to reflect a more child-like essence. It wasn’t until I was several years into my marriage that I found evidence that I was dealing with more than a controlling husband.
In 1986 while living in his homeland, I discovered my husband was some sort of Japanese version of Peter Pan. Carefully tucked under his futon mattress were three paperbacks containing fanciful photos of underage nude girls. When confronted my husband staunchly defended his collection saying it was “fantasy, art, and nothing more,” adding that the materials were legally purchased from the local newstand.
“What have I gotten myself into?” I thought at the time. “After nearly six years in the culture how could I have missed this?”
Surely I had seen similar graphic materials at train station kiosks. Perhaps when I too was younger, men’s magazines with cute teenage girls on the covers didn’t strike me as odd. Coming face to face with the content in my home was another matter. Clearly the images were intended to titillate.
While I had somehow overlooked this seedy side of Japan, I hadn’t missed the fact that little girl cuteness was idolized and mimicked as the preferred style for young women in Japan. And wanting to fit in and please my husband I had naturally followed suit. By my husband’s training I had become soft-spoken and demure. Essentially regressing in mind and body— my nearly six-foot frame fitting into the perfect Japanese size “M.”
Japan’s idolization of young girls, a trend that began in the 1980’s, has now shockingly expanded throughout the world as “cool Japan.” It is most often symbolized by the cute schoolgirl uniform-look popularized by the anime “Sailor Moon.” And once upon a time, “Electric Town,” Tokyo’s Akihabara district, was the place where we shopped for boom boxes and the latest Sony Walkman. But it has changed. Today it is filled with anime, manga (Japanese comics) and cosplay (costumes for teens and young adults). It’s all fantasy…most of it innocent, but some of it crosses a line foreigners may recognize but often dismiss on cultural grounds.
Although I long ago abandoned the culture, language and most everything I knew, I worry that postmodern Japanophiles do not truly grasp the underpinnings of what they are buying and watching today. Mr. Right wasn’t your average pedophile. Child pornography was legal to manufacture in Japan until 2011 and to possess until 2014. Sexually graphic anime and manga involving youthful characters in school uniforms is protected as freedom of expression both in Japan and the US.
While I readily admit there are plenty of wonderful animation and comics coming out of Japan, parents and fans alike should be aware of the cultural context surrounding the materials they are watching and buying. When the sexually graphic or even titillating content featuring children is readily available, it normalizes what would otherwise be considered taboo. In Japan teenage girls desperate for money and attention sell their time for walks or conversation…putting themselves in precarious situations that can easily lead to sexual acts.
It seems no one can say for sure whether or not molestation is more common in Japan than elsewhere as data is sorely lacking, but it would not be surprising that victims would come out of the woodwork if public disclosure were more common. I am painfully aware that the reporting of such incidents is often discouraged by Japanese family members to avoid bringing shame. My ex mother-in-law is an example of this old-school mentality. It is apparent to me from conversations following her son’s arrest that she would have preferred the matter to be handled within the family. Of course she would.
It has been more than a decade since Mr. Right was taken from his suburban home to the county jail and he remains incarcerated to this day. Since then, Japan has joined the rest of the industrialized world and passed laws against the manufacture and procession of child porn. Yeah. But still, right under our noses, the cutie culture persists and virtual representations of sex acts on children skirts regulations. Subtly it permeates.
For those that love Japan for all of its “kawaii” cuteness, it is important to understand that there can be a dark side. The popularity certain imagery can cause girls and young women to act vs. be (an example of this is the way many Japanese girls and young women speak). Further, when a young woman becomes a mother, a man whose fantasies involve much young girls may in fact treat his wife more harshly and consider her “too old” and unappealing. This is precisely what happened to me and I realize now how stunted I was under the pedophile’s rule.
Although my ex in the end turned out to be a vile pedophile, I believe that permission for his view came from the cultural normalization of his preference. And by the same token, rather than run, I stayed. After all, the materials he purchased were readily available and all around little girl cuteness was idolized. In Japan, it was all just “natural” as he put it, “For who can deny the loveliness of little girl?”
You can find my redemptive story “The Six-Foot Bonsai: A Soul Lost in the Land of the Rising Sun” on Amazon.
*** Thank you for reading. Please support efforts to “Stop the Silence” by donating through Global Giving (link).
This should be read by everyone who is about to travel to Japan. I was there in June and felt uncomfortable with some of the things I saw, but I wasn’t really aware of how bad things were. Now that you have explained this, I can also understand the Japanese Red Light area in Bangkok where the bars are staffed by young Thai girls dressed as little nurses, schoolgirls, and any other profession which they can represent in short-skirts.
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Once you know Mari it really kind of ruins things in a way. You can escape it to a degree by going to the countryside, but I heard from someone living in a rural part of Japan that some towns have junior idols for their tourist campaigns.
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And having watched a recent U-Tube expose of the “cute” trade in Tokyo of hiring schoolgirls for walking with, it’s even more disturbing. It belittles both the men and the women. I hope Japan eventually gets a good feminist movement going.
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Feminist movement?! That would be even worse. Feminisim isnt about equality. Its about less rights for men, and more rights for women. You feminist are ruining western society. The woman who wrote this article is a terrible wife. If she didnt like what her husband did she could have simply divorced him. She didnt need to snitch.
Women have been using their sexuality to avoid, prison, poverty, physical labor, ect since the beginning of time. Dont play coy. A test was ran years ago, and the “end results” of feminism has already been seen. Men will ultimatly refuse to be with you, and you women still wont be happy.
Forcing men to work for you, for free, will not work.
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Hi Sebby. I’m not sure what you mean. I was a Japanese wife for a time and I worked very hard to make the home as perfect as possible. I made every meal from scratch with multiple courses. I did this by choice. And this life was my choice and would have been as respectable as any career woman’s life. Except there was one small problem in that my husband was abuse…in fact so ridiculously manipulative and self-centered that he has been sitting in prison for actions derived from his outlandish sense of reality.
But that was then and this is now. For the past 21 years I’ve been a professional woman and would never land in that kind of relationship.
When you wrote, “If she didn’t like what her husband did…” are you referring to the fact that he beat my son and molested my daughter? These things happed after the divorce and since he is in prison it seams fair to out him (although I don’t use his real name) for his crimes.
I have not used my sexuality to avoid anything. I’m not very good at sex really. My strength lies in being a good companion to my good husband Kent. I’m so lucky to have his love! We’ve been together 17 years and spend a lot of good times fishing and playing games. I hope you find the companion of your dreams Sebby!
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The problem with the society that we live in today is that everything is intensified multiple fold with commercialization. It is a culture that worships money over moral values. In Cambodia and Thailand, teenage girls are sold into prostitution to support families financially because it is more lucrative than standard jobs. Plus no formal education required when girls go into prostitution. Not many families are willing to invest in girls. In Japan, many teenagers gave into peer pressure because they think having branded items are synonymous with prestige and success. They fail to understand that satisfying material needs can never fill the void of emptiness within. In fact it drove them deeper into debt. It is a vicious cycle. Also, it is not that Japanese girls don’t have a voice. Do society want to listen to them? Society cannot expect Japanese women to be as eloquent, as expressive or meet the standards of their Western counterparts. Since young, equality is close to non-existent at home. At school, encouraged to choose courses that show promising career prospects. In the job market, women are not given equal salary but worked twice harder than men. After having a baby, employers are hesitant to hire Japanese mothers because they don’t believe in simultaneously building a career and raising a balanced family. The pressure of getting married before 25 are also imposed by Asian society in general. The odds are very much against women. The whole “cute” industry is again fuel by commercialization. Cuteness sells. Sex sells. It’s a fact everywhere. Even in Russia, it is unusual for a woman not to have a child by the time she reaches 25. If still unmarried by 25, they are known as old maids or spinsters.
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All of what you wrote Mari is true. You have an excellent understanding of the situation. Many want to say that Japan is just like any other country when it comes to pedophilia but it is not true. The normalization is the issue and women’s voices are not in concert against it.
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Hello Wheat Wonderings! In the hubbub of Christmas I missed replying to your excellent comment. Yes Japanese women do have a voice I agree with you, but by the popularity of cuteness the voices of teenage girls and young women are demure and small. And once they graduate from college almost always they are on a certain path to become wives and mothers as you have noted. I would like to see a large collective voice demanding more.
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The challenge with change is that Japanese women don’t see it as a problem. Actually, Shintoism which is the official religion of Japan doesn’t view sexual perversions such as pornography, pedophilia and incest as a crime.
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The idolization of youth is a cultural sickness, maybe more evident in Japan but certainly entrenched in the US, too. Just look at Hollywood. Incest is way more common here than is supposed, possibly because of the same reasons. The perpetrators and their families know it is wrong, and the child is afraid of angering or alienating complicit adults, is blamed or ignored.
It seems this reflects an immature society that is afraid of the responsibilities of adulthood. It results in a child-like culture that delegates responsibility to outside agents, like religion or government, to control people who are not willing to control themselves. While people claim to want freedom, they behave as though they need outside controls, someone to blame when things don’t go their way.
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I personally have no data about incest here or in Japan. Statistics are sorely lacking everywhere for so many reasons. As for Hollywood, I do not see the emphasis on underage starlets as sex symbols; and when it does occur (Miley Cirus, Britany Spears…) many mature Americans are critical…almost thinking that what they are viewing is a joke. We are far less tolerant and our laws on crimes involving children are stiff– with pedophiles being branded for life. I can look up pedophiles in my town and pinpoint where they live.
I agree that it is an immature society that participates in Peter Pan behavior…wishing to be forever young instead of accepting responsibility. Although I see some of that here in the US, I do not see adult men in the late 20’s and beyond trying to access teenagers unless there is something really wrong with them. If we knew of such a person in our circles, we would label them as pedophiles. In Japan, it is more frequently dismissed as the normal quirk of a man who does not want to face his adult responsibilities. Thank you Katherineotto for you comments! I greatly appreciate your views.
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I didn’t mean to imply that Americans are as bad as Japanese regarding pedophilia, but you admit your ex was particularly reprehensible along these lines, or he wouldn’t still be in jail.
I know so little about the Japanese culture. Your writings are truly enlightening. I have heard Japan is also big on ancestor worship, or elder worship. If that’s true, it would add another level of complexity to the pedophilia issue, would it not? A kind of extremism at both ends of the scale?
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Hi Katharineotto! My ex is in Jail because of his actions and the fact that after a many years his victim gathered the courage to reach out and tell someone. She had been so intimidated and controlled, but because she had enough American in her and generally knew that society and the legal system would work in her favor with evidence, she gathered courage finally. If she were in Japan, I think she would have just told someone in the extended family and matters would have been handled behind closed doors with many fights and some sort of family protection vs. bringing in any authority. Very few cases are reported. Only a few are prosecuted.
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I didn’t realize she was outside Japan when she spilled the beans. I guess this is in the book. Apologies for not having read your book, but my hypertensive crisis in early October made reading extremely difficult. Eyes are getting better now but still not up to snuff.
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Yeah and “prison” is what I meant to express. Sorry about the eyesight issues I can totally relate!
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Pedophilia is rampant in the USA and Canada, just as it is in Japan and many other Asian countries, including Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. American “sex tourists” flock to those places for illicit sex with underage girls (and boys, whether they dress up as girls or not). What is illegal in America, isn’t “over there” – and has been going on for decades. I’m very much aware of it.
My question is, what are local, national, and international groups doing about it – if anything? Additionally, the internet has made it much easier for people to prey on children of many nationalities, and kids, especially girls, are groomed even in the “safety” of their own homes, due to ignorant and clueless parents who use television and computers as “baby-sitters.”
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It is definitely everywhere. And Westerners are customers. There’s a market for children and some countries are willing to supply. The normalization is twist– and by a first world nation that values honor. The “overthere-ness” is problematic. Your points add to this conversation and I greatly appreciate your input!
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While pedophilia is rampant everywhere, in the US there are stiff penalties and social stigma. My ex would be tagged for life should he ever be allowed to return to society. We have websights to track where such people live. In Japan, Mr. Right would have likely never been reported in the first place. He would have been just like any “dirty-minded old man.”
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It “has been going on for decades.” Try millenia. Selling children into slavery, prostitution, or as drug traffickers is quite common in countries where life is cheap and children likely to starve along with parents if parents don’t give them up or sell them.
Listen to Vietnam vets talk about what Vietnamese parents did with their babies to maim and kill American soldiers. Grenades in the cribs under screaming babies, deposited at the doors of barracks. American apple pie values were tossed back in in our Baptist-bred Bible-belt farmland faces.
Vietnam turned combat vets’ innocent American ideals into their cynical opposites, for some of them, and made peace-loving isolationists among others. America hasn’t looked within to find plenty of work caring for families of the soldiers already killed and providing relevant support to maimed veterans, as well as the families who have to pick up where the VA bureaucratic nightmare ends. In my experience, Vietnam vets are the most peace-loving people around, survivalists, competent, and exhausted by the conflicts. They want to support the troops, but they think the wars are wrong.
Meanwhile, Agent Orange, a Monsanto product, like Roundup (glycophosphate), poisoned everyone equally in Vietnam, but the Americans got out. What are the residual effects of widespread use of Agent Orange? I read in the New York Times the other day that Syngenta, another seed/chemical company comparable to Monsanto, is allowed to produce paraquat in the UK, but only for export. Paraquat is banned in the Eurozone, but not in the good ole US of A. Paraquat–an herbicide which made headlines in the 1970s for the government’s dumping on marijuana fields–was believed to cause serious lung damage in those who inhaled or smoked it. The NYT noted this week that as weeds have become more resistant to glycophosphate, paraquat use has risen four-fold as an alternative. East meets West. Who wins under this scenario?
Sorry to side-rail your blog for this rant, but I believe good nutrition is a key antidote for endemic sub-clinical malnutrition among our children and population at large. Nutrition is near the top of my 2017 blog themes: “Ten Years Ago This Month,” from my 2007 journal.
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Merry Christmas to you and yours and thank you for enriching my life with your blog post’s.
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Merry Christmas to you Mr. Pete! I am thankful for your kindness!
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Hey old Army guy. I just posted above a plea for Vietnam vets. Defense spending directed to good care for those we’ve already maimed and families of those maimed and killed. Would appreciate any feedback you may have.
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It first struck me as weird — very weird, to hear the staff and almost all (if not all) women talk in their high pitched 5-year old voices. No wonder.
I saw a few of the popular animations in Japan, and asked my husband if kids watch the indecent yet seemingly innocent actions of the characters, and he said “yes!” OMG. To say in the least, I wasn’t impressed with this side of their culture. 😑
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It is always good to hear from someone else who saw these things and recognized them for what they were. It is so easy to be blinded by culture and say, “They just do things different here…but there’s no problem with it.” In the case of Japan, they are first-world, so cool, polite and clever, that it is hard to imagine any ill comes of this child idolization (and sexualization) content. But it does. Lines are blurred and minds are warped. Anime fans (otaku) are particularly unwilling to think that anything could happen to really children and young women as a result of their all to common themes. Thank you for the comment.
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“almost all (if not all) women talk in their high pitched 5-year old voices.”
Egh. Freaky.
Enlightening post. Thank you.
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Thank you Wayfarer for recognizing the voice and for reading this article. It is not a far leap to say that such behavior gives men what they want and that what they want is a girl who is not indpendently grown but dependent upon him and forever “cute.” But of course that never lasts as a woman becomes a mother and for that must grown up. Then the man is left thinking of the girl that is not his to have…one much younger and even underage naturally. When this notion is sexualized fantasy, then we have pedophilia. This is something I’m writing about regularly as I lived it in Bonsai.
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[…] No Ordinary Pedophile: Japan’s Idolization of Children […]
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How strange I should have found your page talking about sexual abuse of children. The novel I’m working on deals with that, and the hunt to bring perpetrators to justice.
I’m going to have to put your book on my research list.
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Thank you William. My ex was outwardly was just a hard working Japanese engineer. You will find out how it all goes down in Detroit.
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[…] Japan’s Idolization of Children: A Cautionary Tale […]
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Congratulations on striking gold with your “OH, dear! I’m another victim” post. It’s my opinion that the vast majority of you in agreement with this nonsense are demonstrating Reaction Formation (look it up). The world is filled with bigoted people like you self-righteous intolerants claiming to hate the very things you do in secret. Society was better off before you had a voice.
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Actually I’m pretty open kimono. If I do anything in secret its probably drink a bit too much when no one is watching. As far as bigotry…that’s an assumption on your part. Everyone should have a voice and express it loudly. I like a good debate and no one has to agree with me.
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I do watch a lot of anime. Not exactly an otaku, but probably enough to have an idea of what is out there. And you are right, there is a vast overrepresentation of subadults in it. Often when the characters are adults, they are drawn much younger.
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Funny you should mention this as I just replied to another comment about the fact that adults are underrepresented. The normalization of this idea puts pressure on young women to act childlike to please. Fantasy crosses into real expectations.
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Sorry about that. Something happened before I could complete my post.
My suspicion is that an exposition that has one meaning in Japan might have an entirely different one here. 90% of the anime I have encountered strikes me as being the kind of fantasy a socially lacking teenager would have. Harem is the classic genre of this type. I don’t see a frustrated 14-year old’s fantasy as being pedophilic in nature.
The anime in America that gets lots of views actually isn’t that bad. Violet Evergarden, The Ancient Magus’ Bride, Attack on Titan, and other’s of that caliber don’t have a lot of loli in them. Fantastic movies by Studio Ghibli. The Ghost in the Shell franchise. Movies like Your Name, Akira, Ninja Scroll, The Girl Who Lept Through Time, Evangelion (2.22 is the best version), Tokyo Godfathers, The Garden of Words.
Maybe you have a different take on popular anime released in America?
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Hello Fred! Thank you for adding your thoughtful comments here. This particular post of mine is less about anime/manga than it is about the “cute” culture and idolization of children— particularly schoolgirls, and how the normalization of such thinking is damaging. If one is somewhat lonely 14-year old American I doubt they see what I see or a Japanese young man sees in the content. The young American’s view is going to be pretty innocent I’m guessing; while a Japanese young man will likely experience some level of titillation with emphasis on certain body parts as they reminisce about their school days.
I on the other hand, as the mother of a child who was molested by her Japanese father and as a women who was taught to act and speak younger so as to be cute and feminine, am quite annoyed by “fan service” and the focus on girls vs. real women. Don’t get me wrong. Good content exists and I’m not suggesting censorship or any sort of hyped up PC police. What I’d like to see, however, is greater awareness and more discourse about the potential affects of normalizing certain behaviors/character types that in effect become “real” because they are so common in fantasy.
I hope what I’m saying makes sense. It is my opinion and not a particularly popular one as Japan is so well-regarded. I too like Japan, but it has become somewhat of a caricature of itself.
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