Akihabara: Geeks, Porn, and Flashing Lights - Japan's Dark Underbelly Exposed

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it also brought me into a bizarre Japanese porn shop, leading me to the most disturbing thing that I have yet seen in Japan.

A person without curiosity is akin to a rabbit without a sex drive; your reason for existence is lost. Most of us humans are curious by nature – a biological trait that enables us to pass down useful discoveries to our offspring; fire hurts your skin, 2-ply is better than 1, your sister, regardless of how much make-up she puts on and how much you’ve had to drink, is off limits to you.

It is with these thoughts in mind- thoughts of the sister that I never had- that I entered a Japanese porn shop a few weeks ago with two American friends. We were in Akihabara, Tokyo, one of the world’s most extensive electronic shopping districts and, next to polygamist Mormon colonies in Utah (where the self-serving men are quite curious about their nieces), Kim Jong Il’s bedroom during ‘hanky-panky time’, and Turkmenistan, it is the strangest place on the planet; scattered with comic-book craving, coke-bottle-lens-spectacle-sporting outsiders of the Japanese mainstream; geeky, fashion-handicapped tech-addicts; diehard adult collectors of the world’s most useless products intended for children (pimpled, gangly Toys R’ Us customers on speed); erotic cartoon shops; and, attractive girls in French maid outfits handing out promotional tissues (for your runny nose, you degenerate!).

At night, Akihabara Electric Town can be seen from the moon- or at least from an airplane that is flying fairly high on a clear evening, directly above the glowing ball of light and commotion. It is a town years ahead of its time- a glimpse of what the world will be like when science fiction writers finally take over office; a whirling mass of depravity, wires, circuits, and cartoon sex packed into a small space- and with enough flickering neon illumination to send a Kalahari Bushman into a complex partial epileptic seizure. For residents of Tokyo, and ever-increasingly, for myself, Akihabara is just part of a warped reality.

We entered the narrow stairway of one of the dozens of porn shops in the district, passing uncomfortably close to suit-clad salary-men on their way out; their packaged purchases gripped tightly in their eager hands. Akihabara porn shops, it would seem, are generally four or five stories tall, each floor of the shop being a tiny, confined room, packed to the tits (pun intended) with porn of all types; risqué videos and pictures of women in unflattering positions, drawings and cartoons for those socially-impotent fellows who have trouble relating to real humans, unsettling yet highly creative props for all purposes - anything that your dirty little mind can concoct. At the entrance to each room, a middle-aged Japanese man stands in a catatonic stupor at the cash register; lost in thought, perhaps entranced by the mountains of porn in constant reach – imagining what kind of sick bastards are nodding hello to him as they creep, soft-footed, into the den of impropriety, their wallets not the only of their possessions bulging with something to be spent.

We moved from one floor to the next, quickly browsing the store’s wares, laughing at the oddity of it all. In the low-ceilinged stair-case, which scales up the dark, porn-warehouse’s aging shell, the walls were plastered with welcoming images of naked Japanese women, as if to warn any un-suspecting grandmother looking for a noodle restaurant that her and her little dog Toto are definitely not in Kansas anymore. And some of the stuff that we saw once we had made it to the top floor of the smut-shack is surely illegal in Dorothy’s home state of tornados, sunflowers and anti-sodomy legislation. Even the Wizard of Oz, that unabashed sexual deviant, quite fond of surrounding himself with attractive witches and height-impaired, squeaky voiced elves, would disapprove.

It was not the cartoon depictions of ‘wolf and girl’ bestiality that were shocking. It wasn’t the racks of school girl uniforms and nurse’s outfits either. Nor were we taken aback by the neatly bundled packages of used underwear – a picture of the former proprietor glued to the front of each, with a personalized message scrawled in hand-writing and a price tag for the equivalent of $100 stapled to the sealed bag. These were comical, largely because they were to be expected in this country of closed-door perversity.

No, the shock came soon after when we stumbled upon the kiddy-porn, the most disturbing thing that I have yet witnessed in Japan. A little known fact about this country – one that you will not read in their official tourist brochure – is that pedophilia is rampant- and tolerated to a much larger degree than anywhere else that I know of. Here we were, on the fifth floor of a typical Tokyo edifice, in the heart of the modernized world, staring face to face with the censored eyes of Thai children showering in their loose-fitting bathing suits. My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it. On the back of the sealed magazine, an ‘Engrish’ slogan of disastrous proportions was printed; something to the effect of “in times sunshine, enjoy beauty the bathing children.”

Alas, there was more. Without having to even search for the filth (you’d think that they’d at least be inclined to keep it behind the counter), we found postcard-sized glossies of elementary school girls at a track-meet; taken discreetly by some pervert with a telephoto lens, showing children removing their track-pants, jumping hurdles, and bent over in race starting positions. And, we found more sealed magazines showing young South-East Asian girls, as young as perhaps 9 years old, dressed skimpily and standing in sexually evocative poses. No nudity was shown on the covers, but small, censored thumbnails gave clues as to what lay beneath the well-fingered, laminated magazine jackets.

The most haunting discovery within the walls of the raunch-shop were packaged pairs of children’s underwear; sized for an 8 year old girl and complete with poke-a-dots, hearts and pretty colours – designs intended to remind the wack-job purchaser of the product that they are indeed the underpants of pre-pubescent kids, and not of a legal-age woman (for what would be the thrill in that?).

This perverse discovery shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. Recently, I read an article outlining one Japanese ‘erotic manga’ magazine’s current promotion. The magazine, which seems to have a cult-like following amongst Japanese pedophiles, has offered to send a free pair of “panties of delight”- underpants made for a 130-cm tall girl (the height of a pre-school child) - to any new subscriber. Such promotions are not un-common for Japanese magazine and video game companies, which often give away free school-issued swimsuits and uniforms in addition to children’s underwear. The most alarming fact however, is the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response that this particular magazine has received from creepy Japanese men across the nation. The publishers have been unable to keep up with the demand for the free children’s ‘panties of delight’ (and I don't think that the new subscribers are school-girls looking for a free pair of usable underwear). Wow! And you thought you had issues!?

Coming from Canada, a country with some of the strictest child pornography legislation in the world, I can’t help but be disgusted by the Japanese attitude toward the exploitation of children. In Canada, anyone in possession of the magazines that we saw in Akihabara would be arrested. The photographer, the publisher, the store owner, the creepy men who pay for it – all would be committing a criminal offence. Here in Japan however, this filth is allowed to be bought and sold; despite the government having outlawed pornography involving children in 2000, this law is clearly not enforced.

While it may not be illegal in Canada for a magazine to give away free children’s underwear, the police would certainly nail the pervert publishers for some other infraction – anything to get the point across; child pornography is not tolerated. I can only hope that Japan will follow suit. Perhaps as long as it is poor girls from impoverished nations such as Thailand and Cambodia, and not the children of Japan, that are being victimized, the Japanese government will continue to turn a blind eye to the issue.

Being a curious guy, I'm wondering how on earth this practice can be considered to be acceptable.

Click here to read more about the erotic manga magazine offering free pre-schooler underwear.