Japan passed a law that states you cannot possess child pornography, how effective or how different will it be from before?

Since when has legislation outlawing an activity ever prevented somebody determined to engage in it?

All it does is allow grounds for prosecution if the individual is caught.

Mere possession of the child porn is now grounds for a conviction where before it wasn’t.

This apparently is different from how things were before this law was enacted.

There will be no random searches for porn. But now the authorities have a tool to use if, when searching you, your premises or your computer(s) for something else, they happen to stumble upon your cache of child porn.

Just because there is an alleged rise in cases involving child porn does not mean there is any actual rise in child porn users.
You should see if there is a corresponding increase in convictions of child porn users.

@Dan_Lyons There will be no random searches for porn. But now the authorities have a tool to use if, when searching you, your premises or your computer(s) for something else, they happen to stumble upon your cache of child porn.
Japanese men are no Neanderthals, now that they know they can’t leave the stull laying around with the rest of their hentai and manga, they will stash it away so their visitors, cleaning lady, won ton delivery guy, won’t see it. Do you know anyone who smokes crack just leaves their pipe in the ash tray when the cable guy comes over? They certainly won’t keep it on their computer unless they really are Neanderthals and not the smart wiz guys the media portrays them as. They will keep the stuff on a thumb drive, removable hard drive etc. The guy with a meth lab in his garage certainly isn’t going to open the roll up door to get the lawn mower out.

Again, @Hypocrisy_Central, how is that a change from pre-legislation?

Were Japanese people proudly flying banners displaying pre-pubescent genitalia over their balconies until the law made them say, “Oh shit! Better bring that inside!”?

Gee @Hypocrisy_Central I guess you have never been looking for one thing but unexpectedly found something for which you weren’t looking.

Well shame is still a big thing in Japan. So if a guy is thrown in jail or even found guilty of some crime, it is very shameful in their eyes. Also they aren’t to big in hiring felons.
So it really comes down to, do they want to possibly be homeless and jobless for perversion or do they like to eat and have a roof over their head more.
It won’t all go away but for those who may just be on the edges of being a full on perve, it may make them see things differently and try to avoid risking their future and risking being ostracised by family members. It’s better than doing nothing.

The one thing that Japan has that few other countries in industrialized nations have is their penal system. The jails there are horrific, and anyone who emerges is a broken man or woman.

So the whole thing turns on how effective they will be at prosecuting and convicting a perp.

@Dan_Lyons Gee @Hypocrisy_Central I guess you have never been looking for one thing but unexpectedly found something for which you weren’t looking.
That happens all of the time; one can enter some innocuous, benign phrase or word in a search engine and come up with some quite shocking content. Some of the stuff I am sure some 12 year old boy is viewing right now; we would have had a hay day with back in the day when my friends and I were 12. You would not even be lucky enough to find that in the stashes of dads, uncles, and grandfathers.

@Pandora It won’t all go away but for those who may just be on the edges of being a full on perve, it may make them see things differently and try to avoid risking their future and risking being ostracised by family members.
You are assuming Japanese enlarge see these men (maybe closet women) as perverted. If (tossing a number out) 30–37% of the population does something and society as a whole know they do and yet there was no outrage, is it a perversion to them, just because another nation may not approve? I am sure there are things done here in this nation that another would view as perverted even though here it is quite common and accepted. Just because there is a law doesn’t mean people will have that idea in their minds. How many people still get high on meth and risk blowing their house up or getting busted producing it, the law hasn’t made it so shameful or repugnant for them to ignore it.

I’m not talking about junk in your computer memory @Hypocrisy_Central So when the Japanese men stash their porn where even the cleaning lady can’t find it, and later they are subjected to a search by police for something else, say a weapon or drugs, and the police stumble onto the porn stash….sheesh, it’s like leading a horse by the nose.

@Hypocrisy_Central It has to do more with their culture reaction to not following the laws. For them it has a bigger effect than simply considering someone a perv. In the states, it is shameful but yet it is a crime that is frequently done. Why, because our society makes tons of excuses for our criminals. In Japan there is no such thing. A, bad seed is just a bad seed. Prisons are filled with felons who have penpals. People who actually go out of their way to meet murders and rapists. We coddle them with tv sets and education and conjugal visits. Japans jails are not that forgiving. Nor are a lot of family members.

In the states, I’ve seen plenty people who laugh about a relative in jail or sympathize or even believe their relative is innocent with a ton of proof to the contrary, Family honor is still a big deal in Japan. So whether they see it as perverse or not is not the point.

I’ll, give you an example. In 1995 you would commonly see drunks sleep off their drinks in the streets and subways of Japan. I just recently went back to Japan and I noticed there were no drunks sleeping in the streets. Seems that people are encouraged to twitter photos of drunks passed out in the street in attempts into shaming them. Well it must be working. It isn’t to say they don’t get drunk but they either make sure they get home before getting drunk or they are making sure that someone takes them home, or they are simply being more responsible.

In Japan, they have their laws, but the rule everyone lives by is “Don’t get caught!” And as @Pandora said, keep in mind that in Japan, you also don’t want to “shame your family”, and of course, getting caught would do that. This works from the government on down, and it’s worked that way for hundreds of years. My daughter lives there and that’s what we’ve seen.

So they are truly double minded about such things.

@Dan_Lyons I’m not talking about junk in your computer memory @Hypocrisy_Central So when the Japanese men stash their porn where even the cleaning lady can’t find it, and later they are subjected to a search by police for something else, say a weapon or drugs, and the police stumble onto the porn stash…]
That is what I am saying; knowing now that they can’t leave their kiddie porn in the magazine rack with their hentai and manga, they won’t keep it in their residence at all, not in physical form where it can be accidently found, or discovered if somehow the cops ever searched the place. They will hide it on ways you can’t just ”happen upon it”. That is the way people handle their dope here, and many are not as smart as the Japanese so why would the Japanese not do likewise?

@Pandora Family honor is still a big deal in Japan. So whether they see it as pervers or not is not the point.
Honor or dishonor it seem to be the point some here in the US want to make of it, as if the Japanese should be saying ”look at those sick men, let’s get them”. The US in a nutshell cannot determine what is perverse or not to another society. As you pointed out, what is thought of as honorable here might be shameful to the Japanese, and may be other nations. The Internet has clips and footage off all sorts of drunken people, men, women, teens, etc. here in the US but getting stupid drunk is often seen as a good time and not shameful. If any nation thought it was shameful and perversion would the US stop doing it, at least publically? I am guessing ”no”.

@snowberry In Japan, they have their laws, but the rule everyone lives by is “Don’t get caught!” And as @Pandora said, keep in mind that in Japan, you also don’t want to “shame your family”, and of course, getting caught would do that.
That is my point, they are not going to stop feeding their appetites, they are just going to take it further underground so that they do not get caught doing it; maybe even to the point of spawning a whole new area of criminality.