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World Service,3 mins,

Why has Japan decided against banning this material?

Assignment
Contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

Available for over a year

Japan’s comics and cartoons – known as manga and anime – are a huge cultural industry and famous around the world. But some can be shocking, featuring children and adolescents in sexually explicit scenarios. Japan only banned possession of real images of child abuse in June last year, but decided at the time against banning the virtual sexual images of children featured in manga and anime. For the BBC’s Assignment programme, James Fletcher has been to Tokyo to find out why

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