/jp/ - Otaku Culture

The ruling coalition parties decided Friday to seek a general ban on the possession of child porn images and to impose prison terms on those who posses or store such images to satisfy their sexual desire, lawmakers said.

The Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, are aiming to craft a bill to amend the law against child prostitution and child pornography by mid-May and to submit it to the ongoing Diet session jointly with opposition parties.

The move comes as Japan is being pressured to revise the law to bring it into line with other Group of Eight member nations. Japan and Russia are the only members of the G-8 that do not prohibit the possession of such images.

The other G-8 member states are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United States. The ruling bloc project team, meanwhile, plans to study the possibility of requiring Internet service providers to restrict access to child porn websites and the introduction of other measures to check the spread of child porn images online.

Meanwhile, a U.S. justice department official urged Japan on Friday to ban individual possession of child pornography as the country comes under pressure to step up its efforts to tackle the problem.

Andrew Oosterbaan, head of the department’s child exploitation and obscenity section, said the Internet was encouraging the creation and sharing of “horrific” images, including of tortured and sexually abused infants and toddlers.