'Pornography', Sexual Objectification and Sexual Violence in Japan and in the World

‘Pornography’, Sexual Objectification and
Sexual Violence in Japan and in the World






Tomo Shibata*


Working Paper No 27
2008



Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies
Lund University, Sweden


www.ace.lu.se





* Tomo Shibata received a doctorate at l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and has
written articles on chlid sexual abuse in the opinon section of The Japan Times, the U.S.-Japan
Women's Journal, and other academic and popular journals both in English and Japanese. She is
currently preparing a book in English provisionally titled Treating Sexual Violence in the Japanese
Context: Wartime Sexual Slavery, Pornography and Father-Daughter Incest.

---

WORKING PAPERS IN CONTEMPORARY ASIAN STUDIES

General editor: Professor Roger Greatrex
Assistant editor: Nina Brand

Publications in this series:

1. Is the world Ready for a Coherent ASEAN+3? / Cesar de Prado Yepes / ISBN 91-975093-0-2
2. Renegotiating Gender and Power: Women’s Organizations and Networks in Politics
– The China Women Mayors’ Association / Qi Wang / ISBN 91-975093-1-0
3. Re-evaluating Preventive Diplomacy in Southeast Asia / J. Michael Tivayanond /
ISBN 91-975093-2-9
4. The Role of Law in Contemporary Indonesia / Mason C. Hoadley / ISBN 91-975093-3-7
5. Closing the Digital Divide: Southeast Asia’s Path towards a Knowledge Society / Hans-Dieter Evers
and Solvay Gerke / ISBN 91-975093-4-5
6. De-colonising Indonesian Historiography / Henk Schulte Nordholt / ISBN 91-975093-5-3
7. Path Dependence, Change, Creativity and Japan’s Competitiveness / Cornelia Storz / ISBN 91-
975093-6-1
8. China Regaining Position as Source of Learning / Jon Sigurdson / ISBN 91-975093-7-X
9. Prospering on Crime: Money Laundering and Financial Crises / Guilhem Fabre /
ISBN 91-975093-8-8
10. Implementing anticorruption in the PRC – Patterns of selectivity / Flora Sapio /
ISBN 91-975093-9-6
11. Shaping the Future of Asia – Chiang Kai-shek, Nehru and China-India Relations During the Second
World War Period / Guido Samarani / ISBN 91-975726-0-8
12. The Consumer Citizen in Contemporary China / Beverley Hooper / ISBN 91-975726-1-6
13. Defining Southeast Asia and the Crisis in Area Studies: Personal Reflections on a Region / Victor T.
King / ISBN 91-975726-2-4
14. Women in Politics in Thailand / Kazuki Iwanaga / ISBN 91-975726-3-2
15. The Return of Piracy: Decolonization and International Relations in a Maritime Border Region (the
Sulu Sea), 1959-63 / Stefan Eklöf / ISBN 91-975726-4-0
16. Youth and the State in Contemporary Socialist Vietnam / Phuong An Nguyen / ISBN 91-975726-5-9
17. In the Ancestors’ Shadow: Cultural Heritage Contestations in Chinese Villages
/ Marina Svensson / ISBN 91-975726-6-7
18. Policies and politics underlying the path for universal access to treatment against AIDS in
Cambodia / Frédéric Bourdier / ISBN 91-975726-7-5
19. Issue without Boundaries: HIV/AIDS in Southeast Asia / Kristina Jönsson / ISBN 91-975726-8-3
20. Modern Military Technology in Counterinsurgency Warfare: The Experience of the Nationalist
Army during the Chinese Civil War / Victor Cheng / ISBN 91-975726-9-1
21. Reform after Reformasi: Middle Class Movements for Good Governance after Democratic
Revolutions in Southeast Asia / Mark R. Thompson / ISBN 91-975727-0-5
22. ’The Two-Sided Family’: The Impact of the Family and Everyday Life on Women’s Political
Participation in Rural Karnataka / Louise Nolle / ISBN 91-975727-1-3
23. Representations - Practice – Spectatorship : A Study of Haptic Relations between Independent
Cinema and Market- led Urbanization in contemporary China. / Andreas Tibrand / ISBN 91-975727-
2-1
24. The ‘Paradox’ of Being Young in New Delhi : Urban Middle Class Youth Negotiations with Popular
Indian Film. / Elizabeth Williams-Ørberg / ISBN 91-975727-3-X
25. Poverty and Sustainability Issues of Microfinance in China: A Case Study in Fu’an, Fujian Province
/ LiLian Lau / ISBN 91-975727-4-8
26. A Case Study of HIV Prevention in Reform-Era Shanghai : From Risk to an Enabling Environment
/ Jacinthe Dumont / ISBN 91-975727-5-6
27. ‘Pornography’, Sexual Objectification and Sexual Violence in Japan and in the World / Tomo
Shibata / ISBN 91-975727-6-4


This working paper is published by the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University.
The views expressed herein, however, are those of the author, and do not represent any official view
of the Centre or its staff.
ISSN: 1652-4128
ISBN: 1-975727-6-4
Layout: Petra Francke, Lund University, Information Office
Printed in Sweden by Lund University, Media-Tryck, 2008
© Tomo Shibata

---

Abstract
In the socio-psychic phenomenon of the “sexual objectification” of girls and
women, massively manufactured by certain media and the majority of
pornography, woman is represented, perceived, assumed and treated (by the
innumerable viewers), in reality, as a sexually materialized object ready to be
exploited (like a disposable toy) exclusively as a means to produce sexual
gratification, but not at all as an end in herself i.e., a human subject with her
own sexual will and human dignity. The repeated and habitual conflation
between the representation of woman as a sexual object in the act of viewing
this genre of pornography, and the presence of women in the viewer’s actual
life, constitutes and naturalizes, in the viewer’s psyche, the female body as a
plausible domain for sexual objectification and intrusion. As an alternative to
the socio-psychic phenomenon of sexual objectification, this paper proposes
the equity of sexual intersubjectivity. The paper then expounds the
grounding for the constitutionality of the Obscenity Law in Japan while
criticizing the conventional interpretations of the Obscenity Law that revolve
around discipline and order.

---

Contents

I. Sexual Objectification and Sexual Inter-subjectivity...................................1

A. What Are “Sexual Objectification” And “Sexual Inter-subjectivity”? ....1

B. What Is “Pornography”?.......................................................................3

C. Sexually Objectifying Media Produces the Desire for Sexual
Violence ....................................................................................................4

D. Inter-subjective Sexuality ...................................................................10

II. The Discursive Institutional Apparatuses of Sexual Objectification .........11

A. Sexual Objectification and Sexual Compulsion ..................................11

III. On the Constitutional Grounding for Criminalizing the Production,
Distribution, Selling and Consumption of the Materials which
Incite Sexual Crimes ....................................................................................15

---

---

---

I. Sexual Objectification and Sexual Inter-
subjectivity
Power is tolerable only on condition that it masks a substantial part of itself.
Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms.


Michel Foucault, “The History of Sexuality Vol. 1”

A. What Are “Sexual Objectification” And “Sexual Inter-
subjectivity”?
Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own
person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at
the same time as an end.
Immanuel Kant, The Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals

Justice that is most just seems to belong to friendship…One person is most
a friend to another if he wishes good to the other for the other’s sake.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Exploitation and crime of myriad kinds are committed especially when the
perpetrator perceives no foreseeable punishment. It is important to eradicate
the context of impunity from any time and space by developing checking
mechanisms, especially for the case of incestuous child abuse (for the
conviction rate of incestuous child abuse by a parent is at a minimum in
Japan). Moreover, if the objective is to thoroughly eliminate sexual violence,
it is essential to conduct research on precisely why and how the very desire to
sexually abuse one’s own child comes into being. I will further suggest legal
reforms necessary to undo the social institution of this desire as a collective
psychic phenomenon.
The following narrative of a rapist in Novel Literature Prize Laureate Oe
Kenzaburo’s fictional work, Silent Cry, reveals the psychic mechanism by
which the desire to commit rape comes into being. A character, Takashi,
attempts to commit premeditated rape against one of his acquaintances, a
female child who lives in the same valley community. Takashi’s retrospective
narrative on this attempted rape and murder manifests the continuing
presence of his enjoyment of sexual objectification and the subjection of his
nameless victim: “that little slut got enticing flesh (ano ninpou musume ha
1
nikutai ha da). Young, too. It (are) was a brat (chibi) that stirs up desire!”

1 Oe Kenzaburo, Silent Cry, John Bester, trans., (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1994), 199.

1

---

The use of the word chibi emphasizes the physical smallness and assumed
physical powerlessness of the victim whom Takashi tries to reduce to a piece
of sexualized flesh to be dominated and exploited. Especially if power as such
signifies the ability to conquer, subjugate and dominate the other, unjust
“pleasure” arises in the act of subjugating the other in the psyche of the rapist.
The “pleasure” produced by the objectifying modality of sexuality and the
unjust “pleasure” produced by the act of conquering the other (who is
perceived as being powerless) come into being through one another at the very
foundation of Takashi’s rape desire.
The criminal modality of sexuality marked by the sheer objectification and
domination of girls and women, as illuminated by Takashi’s narrative
regarding his rape victim (“that little slut got enticing flesh…It was a brat that
stirs up desire”), has been most effectively reproduced by the representation of
(usually) women as sexual objects in the vast majority of so conventionally
called “pornography.” The sexually objectifying representation of women
takes place also in the kinds of advertisement, which expose the sexual body
parts of a girl or/and a woman as a vital strategy to producing the
objectification-oriented sexual pleasure in the viewer’s psyche. The objective
of this advertisement strategy is to subliminally gain the viewer’s eager
attention to the product to be sold.
Rapist Takashi’s utterance articulates and reveals how his rape desire is
produced. The vast majority of so-called “pornography” produce in the
psyche of the viewer, the phenomenon of automated sexual gratification and
pleasure in the act of viewing the exposed bodily form, which Takashi calls
“enticing flesh.” By doing so, the vast majority of so-called “pornography”
invite the viewer to automatically ignore the feelings and human dignity of
the person who owns the exposed body, the “enticing flesh”—which virtually
marks the mechanism of sexual objectification. In the socio-psychic
phenomenon of the “sexual objectification” of girls and women, massively
manufactured by certain media and the majority of pornography, woman is
represented, perceived, assumed and treated (by the innumerable viewers), in
reality, as a sexually materialized object ready to be exploited (like a disposable
toy) exclusively as a means to produce sexual gratification, but not at all as an end
in herself (in Kant’s sense of the practical imperative) i.e., a human subject with
her own sexual will and human dignity. The repeated and habitual conflation
between the representation of woman as a sexual object in the act of viewing
this genre of pornography, and the presence of women in the viewer’s actual
life, constitutes and naturalizes, in the viewer’s psyche, the female body as a
plausible domain for sexual objectification and intrusion.
2

---

Critiques of sexual objectification are often misconstrued simply as sexual
repression probably because sexual objectification is conventionally perceived
as the only avenue for sexual experience. Most problematically, sexual
objectification in the media and other constructed visual forms including
various forms of art is presumed to be a concretization of “sexual liberation,”
an utterly confused and conflated signifier. Critically different from this
objectification-ridden modality, an alternative modality of sexuality comes
into being only through empathizing and identifying with the other’s sexual
emotions, and inter-subjectively sharing and giving pleasure to one another.
In this inter-subjective modality of sexuality, one treats the other not as a
sexual object (as prescribed by the predominant genre of pornography and
certain media), but as a sexual subject with sexual will and human dignity. In
sexual inter-subjectivity, the other’s sexual pleasure is produced by the sexual
act of treating the other not simply as a means to one’s sexual gratification but
as the end in her/himself. In this sexuality, one wishes good to her/his partner
for the partner’s sake. In this manner, one’s sexual will, feelings and pleasure
come into being through mutually feeling and identifying with the other’s
2
sexual will, feelings and pleasure.

B. What Is “Pornography”?
“Porno”(?o??o) in its Greek origin signifies prostitutes as well as female slaves
because ancient Greek prostitutes were commonly bought slaves.3 “Graphy”
(????o?) signifies writing. Etymologically, “pornography” depicts women as
sexual slaves, and sexually and psychically re-enslaves women in its production
and consumption processes. However, certain social science discourses
attempt to define “pornography” as “sexually explicit media that are primarily
4
intended to sexually arouse the audience.” This particular definition of
“pornography” sometimes used in the social sciences further includes not only
sexual objectification but also the expressions of “sexual inter-subjectivity.”
Sexual inter-subjectivity is realized without exposing sexual bodily parts in
front of a camera. Sexual inter-subjectivity is crystallized without depicting
sexual bodily parts in detail (either in a narrative or drawing form) in a way


2 A phenomenological critique of inter-subjective sexuality is that the other that one perceives in a sexual
relationship is a visual phenomenon. The assumption that inter-subjective sexuality makes, namely,
that one may perceive the truth of the other’s emotional state, is false. However, the very effort to
share the emotional state of the other will, at least, prevent child incestuous abuse and other forms of
sexual crimes.
3 Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, compiled, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1996), 1450.
4 Neil Malamuth, “Pornography,” in N. J. Smelser & P. B. Baltes, ed., International Encyclopedia of
Social and Behavioral Sciences vol.17 (Amsterdam, New York: Elsevier), 11816-11821.

3

---

that produces a psychic desire for sexualized human degradation. The
conflation of these two genres of sexuality (objectification and inter-
subjectivity) takes place in the definition of pornography as “sexually explicit
materials” in certain social science studies and in other spaces of discourses.
This conflation of two different genres of sexuality in the definition of
“pornography” often prevents us from realizing the very existence and
mechanism of sexual objectification operative in the social phenomenon of
“pornography.” The critical conflation of these two irreducibly different
genres/modalities of sexuality operative in the very definition of
“pornography” thus thwarts our forthright critiques.
Instead of the word “pornography,” a word that comports with the reality of
sexual objectification, “sexually objectifying media/material,” ought to be used
in various discourses.
Despite the above conflation operative in the definition of “pornography,”
most of social science research, including the following meta-analysis, defines
“pornography” as what I call “sexually objectifying media,” which consists of
the stimuli of nudes and persons engaging in sexual acts (both violent and
consensual).5 A meta-analysis of forty-six published studies done in North
America ranging in date from 1962 to 1995, including a total sample size of
12,323 people, found that exposure to sexually objectifying media increases
sexual perpetuation by 32 percent in comparison with control groups (who
are not exposed to sexually objectifying media): “The results of the meta-
analysis are stable and generalizable…clear and consistent: exposure to
pornographic material puts one at increased risk for…committing sexual
offenses…and accepting rape myth.”6

C. Sexually Objectifying Media Produces the Desire for Sexual
Violence
Research findings that conclude, on the contrary, an absence of causality
between sexually objectifying materials and sex crimes are extremely rare, and
have been subjected to extensive critiques due to critical defects involved in
the processes of their empirical analysis. The research findings of M.
Diamond and A. Uchiyama, which concludes that there is an absence of
causal link between “pornography” and sexual crimes in Japan, has not been
criticized as extensively as the findings of Berl Kutchinsky, despite its

5 Elizabeth Oddone-Paolucci et al., “A Meta-Analysis of the Published Research on the Effects of
Pornography,” in The Changing Family and Child Development, ed. Claudio Violato et al. (Hants,
England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2000) 49.
6 Ibid, 48, 52-53.
4

---