Elimination of adolescence

[Fragment]

Just a thought bubble:
In 2022, Japan lowered the age of majority from 20 to 18.

In 2023, Japan raised the age of consent from 13 to 16.

In effect they are gradually eliminating adolescence as a legal category. It used to be that the teen years were seen as a transition between childhood and adulthood. Rights and responsibilities gradually increased.

Instead of keeping this grey, in-between zone we're moving to a thick, black line between the two, as if somehow human growth is instantaneous.

[mrlolicon93]

There is a reason as to why they did these things though let me explain.

For one yes the national age of consent in Japan was 13 but this never really mattered and nothing really changed anyway because most Japanese prefectures just like US states have their own local laws and most prefectures actually have the AOC from 16-18 so in reality nothing really changed.

Second regarding the age of majority they did this mainly because Japan's working population has been shrinking in recent years so one way they tried to get young people back into the workforce was to give Japanese teens more responsibility such as they now have the ability to get an apartment in their name apply for loans and credit cards and even get married without their parents permission.

The Japanese government wants young people to spend more money contribute to the economy and work hard because in Japan if you don't work or have no direction in life you are seen as a loser as they say "出る釘は打たれる" The Nail that sticks up gets hammered in.

However from what i have read on this topic some Japanese argue that even though they are now legally adults they still don't really feel like it and also, don't like that the new laws have a negative impact on Coming of age day which is the day Japanese people celebrate when someone turns 20 or an adult pre-2022.

Just thought i would give some context here and add some clarification.

[Fragment]

For one yes the national age of consent in Japan was 13 but this never really mattered and nothing really changed anyway because most Japanese prefectures just like US states have their own local laws and most prefectures actually have the AOC from 16-18 so in reality nothing really changed.

As someone facing prosecution under the new laws, a lot changed. Under the old law sexual interaction with a minor aged 13-17 resulted in a fine or a maximum 1-2 year penalty (depending on the prefecture). Under the new laws 13-15 year olds are treated the same as 0-12 year olds so you face a 5-20 penalty for penetration and 6 months to 10 years. Try telling the soccer coach that anally fingered a student 10 days after the law changed and got a 10 year sentence that nothing changed when under the old laws he would’ve got 2 years at most.

“It was already illegal” doesn’t mean shit when the penalty becomes 5 times heavier overnight.

As for the age of majority being reduced, those were some of the points raised. But I’ve lived in Japan for the last 10 years. Lived through these changes. I’ve seen how teens are being infantilized more and more.

I’ve also seen one of the main reasons people give for change as, “Japan is so behind, we need to align with the West more.” It’s soft imperialism. In some cases that can benefit Japan (corporate work culture), but in many cases it just results in Japan following the west all the way down to hell (but in some ways it’s worse because often Japan doesn’t fully adopt western values so you end up with bastardised monstrosities that are the worst of both worlds). It’s not just issues related to minors, my wife was complaining recently about how Japan is adopting “everything is harassment” culture from the west and the damage it’s doing to workplaces.

Just giving some added context from a local

[Valerian]

What is the meaning of "age of majority" forgive me for my naivety. Is it the age of maturity? Or becoming an adult? The word majority confusing in the context.

[mrlolicon93]

For one yes the national age of consent in Japan was 13 but this never really mattered and nothing really changed anyway because most Japanese prefectures just like US states have their own local laws and most prefectures actually have the AOC from 16-18 so in reality nothing really changed.

As someone facing prosecution under the new laws, a lot changed. Under the old law sexual interaction with a minor aged 13-17 resulted in a fine or a maximum 1-2 year penalty (depending on the prefecture). Under the new laws 13-15 year olds are treated the same as 0-12 year olds so you face a 5-20 penalty for penetration and 6 months to 10 years. Try telling the soccer coach that anally fingered a student 10 days after the law changed and got a 10 year sentence that nothing changed when under the old laws he would’ve got 2 years at most.

“It was already illegal” doesn’t mean shit when the penalty becomes 5 times heavier overnight.

As for the age of majority being reduced, those were some of the points raised. But I’ve lived in Japan for the last 10 years. Lived through these changes. I’ve seen how teens are being infantilized more and more.

I’ve also seen one of the main reasons people give for change as, “Japan is so behind, we need to align with the West more.” It’s soft imperialism. In some cases that can benefit Japan (corporate work culture), but in many cases it just results in Japan following the west all the way down to hell (but in some ways it’s worse because often Japan doesn’t fully adopt western values so you end up with bastardised monstrosities that are the worst of both worlds). It’s not just issues related to minors, my wife was complaining recently about how Japan is adopting “everything is harassment” culture from the west and the damage it’s doing to workplaces.

Just giving some added context from a local

Thanks for adding the extra context this adds a lot more to the topic some of it i was aware of and other things i was not.

I did hear about Japan adopting the everything is harassment culture thing from the west but isn't that mostly a Japanese Gen Z thing or no?

I do agree with you that it does feel like soft imperialism. which makes me wonder how much longer until the remaining accepted/legal map parts of Japanese culture such as Lolicon Junior idols Child sex dolls JAV lolis 3D CGI/AI art and erotic novels and manga that depict child/adult sex are all eventually outlawed and made illegal?

I really hope this never happens but i don't have high hopes tbh.

Sadly Japan is apart of The United Nations and if they wanna be all buddy buddy with them especially The US they have to play ball with woke America which just shows how spineless they really are.

They have even played ball with China in recent years as well.

[Fragment]

I did hear about Japan adopting the everything is harassment culture thing from the west but isn't that mostly a Japanese Gen Z thing or no?

Unfortunately not. A lot of companies are doing compliance training so even older people are getting indoctrinated. In 2018 I was working at a school with another foreign teacher. One time in his lesson he did an English speaking activity where the students had to answer (an easy) question in English, then were allowed to sit down. One boy refused to answer even a simple question like "what's your name" (this was in an intermediate level class) so my co-worker had him continue standing.

The parents came to the school to complain, saying that the teacher had "harassed" their precious little son and they wanted a different teacher. The father (in Western terms he would've been Gen X) brought documents from his workplace showing that "harassment is anything that the victim feels is harassment" to prove that their son was a "victim". Thankfully for my co-worker the school had his back and basically just ignored the parents. But the victim culture (which goes far beyond just sex) is well and alive in many parts of Japan (upper-middle class is probably the worst- "monster parents", the Japanese equivalent of helicopter parents or Chinese tiger moms). It's not everyone (yet), but it isn't seeing any strong push-back either. It's going to keep getting worse before it gets better. And the low birth rate coupled with older parents who struggle to conceive means that a lot of parents see their kids as unrealistically "exceptional". No-one wants to admit that their kid is just average, or god forbid worse than average, especially when they pay tens of thousands of dollars on cram school, piano lessons, swimming lessons and English tutoring.

[Artaxerxes II]

Not sure if it's relevant, but I did write a comment pertaining to transition to the adult world in Japan for high-schoolers, although in the context of anime MCs demographics:

https://forum.map-union.org/viewtopic.php?p=2912#p2912

To understand that, we need to understand how Japanese society worked in the 1990s: During high schools, students in Japan had to contact companies to get more lucrative jobs like being promised positions at a company, with the prerequisites being getting specific grades, and going to university or mill colleges in some cases and get such and such scores. This meant that students can get jobs right away once they graduate, but at the cost of personal freedom in adulthood. In other words, they had to be workaholics lest they become homeless or NEETs that rely on their parents for survival (or suicide if neither are viable options). We should also understand this within the broader context of Japanese society of that era, where it was hit with economic stagnation following the asset price bubble as a result of the Japanese government not knowing what to do with the fruits of past economic growth of the 1980s, something which Japan struggles to this day. It's also pertinent to point out that Japan then and now has been under dominant-party rule by a single neoliberal party for almost the entirety of the post-war period, meaning that most Japanese are unlikely to see any change via democratic means, and neither through revolution.

Could this change have to do with economics? Japan is still struggling with the after-effects of the "Lost Decade", so the cutback on adolescence might be another instance of Americanism, but could also be due to economic anxieties leading to a more prominent culture of safety-ism and infantilisation of society, and treating both children and young adults in the same way whilst delaying adulthood follows from there. And no, I don't think it has anything to do with the constitutional limits on the JSDF as some Japanese nationalists may assert, as South Korea displays very similar trends despite the military there playing a greater societal role than the JSDF does in Japan.