Censorship in Japan

Censorship in Japan (2021) is the final book in Hoi-yan Yau and Weung-wah Wong’s trilogy on Japanese adult videos, following Japanese Adult Videos in Taiwan (2014) and The Japanese Adult Video Industry (2018). Like the first two books in the series, Censorship in Japan draws on ethnographic fieldwork, this time to examine a number of issues that have developed out of the authors’ previous work; issues that scholars of Japanese pornography have grappled with for decades.

In the introductory chapter, the authors pose a number of questions. First, why are Japanese adult videos (AV) mosaiced, rendering them “nothing more than a kind of softcore pornography” (p. 3)? Second, why does sexist and misogynistic content permeate many genres of Japanese adult videos? Third, why, despite the attention paid to moral issues by the self-regulatory bodies of the Japanese AV industry, does such sexist and misogynistic content thrive? And finally, why do so many genres of AVs exist in the Japanese industry in the first place? Yau and Wong argue that the answers to these questions lie in the voluntarily established “self-regulatory bodies” (jishu dantai) which regulate the AV industry, and over ten chapters seek to demonstrate how these bodies operate.

In chapter two the authors provide a brief history of censorship in Japan, from the Edo period (1603–1868) through to today. This ambitious chapter covers the development of the concept of obscenity (waisetsu) in the Meiji era (1868–1912), film censorship in the interwar years, shifts in what was targeted for censorship by the occupying allied powers in the immediate postwar period, and the founding of Union of Motion Picture Producers (Eirin) in the 1950s. It ends with a discussion of what exactly constitutes obscenity, concluding that key to identifying obscenity in the Japanese context is the idea that “sex should be kept personal and private” (p. 37).

Chapter three provides an introduction to Japanese adult videos, beginning with a history of what Yau and Wong term the “two major traditions” (p. 44) of Japanese adult videos – pink films (pinku eiga) and vinyl cover books (binibon) – before providing a detailed description of two major genres of Japanese adult videos and the way in which they evolved from pink films and vinyl cover books. The authors argue that the “savior ideology” – their way of describing women’s lack of sexual agency and men’s sexual domination over women – remains central in the production of Japanese adult videos today.

Chapters four and five introduce some of the major AV production and distribution companies and outline the way in which the Nihon Ethics of Video Association (Biderin) came to control the production, inspection, and circulation of AVs. The authors explain the impact this had on larger and smaller production companies which were split into two trajectories – mainstream AV featuring beautiful actresses and “approved” content, versus smaller companies testing the limits with new genres and content. Here we are introduced to the remarkable connection between the police force, former police officers, and Biderin, and learn the ins and outs of video and packaging inspection criteria.

Chapter six examines the rise of the Media Ethics Association (Medirin), a challenger to Biderin’s previously well-established hegemony. This chapter utilizes the framework of Victor Turner’s social drama (1974/1987) – following the four phases of breach, crisis, redressive action, and reintegration – to examine how Medirin was responsible for large shifts in the adult video industry as a whole. The story continues in chapter seven where the authors link the establishment of a competitor regulatory agency with the state prosecution of Biderin on charges of obscenity, and demonstrate how the tacit agreement between the police and Biderin was always precarious, particularly as Biderin only ever existed as a self-regulatory agency, rather than state-run body. Yau and Wong argue that the prosecution of Biderin gave rise to a new organization, the Image Ethics Association (Eizōrin), and to further changes in the adult video industry, including the hiring of women as adult video inspectors for the first time.

In chapter eight the authors return to ethnography to detail how adult video inspections are conducted, with a particular focus on the spatial aspects of the office, inspection procedures, and ways in which Eizōrin has attempted to construct a new order in the industry through moralization and bureaucratization. The idea of an adult video self-regulatory agency attempting to ensure that “immoral” videos are prevented from circulating in society is particularly fascinating, as is the description of Eizōrin as working to create a corporate culture in which non-sexism and equality are valued. In chapter nine the authors explain how this new inspection regime was responsible for the emergence of a new category of adult video, provide a rich description of one such video, and detail how adult video actresses function as a genre of idol.

In the concluding chapter, Yau and Wong discuss the implications of Japan’s self-regulatory regimes and reiterate that the voluntary nature of these unofficial bodies means they are required to interact with police, courts, production companies, and distributors. The authors revisit the concept of obscenity, and the tension that develops from self-regulatory bodies acting as authorities while working within an environment in which the term remains undefined. As a result, the most common interpretation focuses on the prohibition of depictions of sexual organs (the “public” rendering of sex discussed in chapter two) and so-called immoral content. Finally, Yau and Wong argue that such a narrow concept of obscenity means that “AV inspection and censorship function to perpetuate and sustain the sexual inequality between men and women” (p. 199) due to tolerance of the “sexist, misogynist, and degrading” (p. 200) savior ideology.

Censorship in Japan marks a significant contribution to porn studies in that it provides, for the first time, an almost encyclopedic examination of the history of Japan’s adult video self-regulatory bodies – something that many scholars of the industry (including myself) have long wished for. At times, however, the book may be asking, or at least attempting to answer, the wrong questions. Early on the authors state that they are not interested in looking at the legal, social, cultural, and political lives of the AV field, nor are they going to “offer a philosophical reflection on morality, especially the relationship between sexual moralities and sexual representations” (p. 4). Yet addressing these very questions would have added further depth to the study, and allowed the reader to understand Yau and Wong’s ethnography in the wider social context of Japan. It also bears mentioning that the book is repetitive in parts, and the structure of many shorter chapters, rather than fewer and more in-depth chapters, may not be appreciated by some readers. Also problematic is the tendency to treat adult videos as a monolithic entity, overlooking diversity within the industry itself. The focus on specific genres, as though they are representative of the industry as a whole, reads as problematic at times.

I believe Censorship in Japan could have benefited from the inclusion of a number of elements. First, engagement with feminist theory, and Japanese feminist scholarship in particular. On page 15 Yau and Wong also state that “Japanese AVs have never been a popular research topic within Japanese academia”, yet this is a situation that has changed markedly in recent years and it would have enriched the book enormously to engage further with the work of scholars seeking to understand how Japan’s censorship system works in the context of a society that is deeply ambivalent about women’s roles, desires, and in particular their participation in the sex industry. Second, the lack of context means that although the authors write that the savior ideology is misogynistic and degrading to women, they fail to address how this particular ideology developed and the way in which it reflects society outside of the video regulation regime. It is not necessarily the regime of censorship itself that is particularly enlightening, but what it represents, and I was left wanting to know more. Third, an examination of how censorship operates in the case of more diverse genres of pornography, including female-friendly and gay adult videos, would have allowed for a better understanding of the self-regulatory regime and AV industry as a whole.

Overall, Censorship in Japan is a valuable resource in that it offers a detailed explanation of the ins and outs of Japan’s often difficult to decipher regime of censorship, outlines its history, and explains how it functions today. The book is rich in data, drawing on interviews and ethnography conducted with AV makers, directors, actors, actresses, wholesalers, rental shop staff, in addition to significant time spent with self-regulatory bodies. This allows the authors to offer a convincing explanation to all who have ever wondered why almost anything goes in Japanese pornography, provided genitalia and pubic hair remain mosaiced. Yau and Wong have made an important contribution with this book, as well as the other two volumes of the series, and have provided abundant material upon which future research can build.

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Alexandra Hambleton

Alexandra Hambleton is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Tsuda University in Tokyo. Her research focuses on media, gender, and sexuality in contemporary Japan and her work has appeared in Contemporary Japan, Porn Studies, and Japanese Studies. She is currently working on a monograph that considers the ways in which female sexuality, capitalism, and feminism intersect in postgrowth Japan.