The society. Bringing shame and disgrace by reporting it would bring more suffering then to just ignore it. The reason it is so low is because they don’t get reported.

As for the “real” rate… who knows? Probably just average maybe worse?

Whenever this debate comes up on forums, someone almost always reminds everyone that Japan has the lowest rate of rape convictions out of basically any country in the world. This ignores, however, that Japan has a much larger prostitution industry, a cultural aversion against reporting sex crimes, and an attitude on women’s rights that’s always been a couple decades behind the rest of the world.

There’s no single reason for any of that, of course. That’s why pornographic media is so headache-inducing. I know that back when I worked for Newtype USA, I hated getting asked by people (once they knew what I did) what’s up with all those young-girl tentacle comics, which was almost always the first thing out of their mouth.

Free speech is vital, nobody can really legislate “obscene,” etc., but does Tim Berners-Lee get asked about his opinion of BangBus as often as I got asked about Japan’s 2D porno?

That last sentence surprised me (not shock, just surprise). I checked Wikipedia, and you’re certainly right, but I ended up even more confused.

The details concerning the apparently huge amount of child pornography related to Japan are kind of….unclear to me. Is it being produced there? Hosted there? Downloaded there? What standards of child pornography are the people who make the reports going by?

I saw this article cited:
http://digital.asiaone.com/Digital/News/Story/A1Story20081204-105512.html

That article only serves to obscure the issue, such as how it combines commentary on both pornography and sex tourism. “The representative added that half of this data depicted harrowing images of sexually abused children” – what makes up the other half, non-harrowing images? “Other participants said Fiji was suffering from a proliferation of pornographic images among youths along with the spread of cell phones” – wait, are we talking sexting here?

“On this occasion, the congress has made clear a consensus among the international community that images depicting the sexual abuse of children in manga and anime is a form of sexual exploitation, as it infringes upon the human rights and dignity of children,” said Akihiko Morita, professor in international human rights studies at Tokyo Institute of Technology.”

Ugh. I flinch whenever someone talks about lolicon, but to see it counted as child pornography bothers me even more.

anyway, sorry for the rant.