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Negotiating "Cool Japan" In Research And Teaching, Mark J. Mclelland

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In June 2014 when the Diet, Japan ' s parliament, movedfi nally to criminalize the simple possession of child pornography images, expanding an earlier 1999 law that had already outlawed the production and dissemination of such images, there was consternation in the Anglophone ¹ (that is, English-language) press. Numerous reports argued that Japan had not gone far enough- since the legislation was not extended to the creation or possession of fantasy images of characters who might " appear to be " children such as can be found in manga or anime. A plethora of sensationalist articles appeared over the course …