Mayuko WATANABE

Media Researcher and Journalist,
President of the Association for Sexual Media Literacy Education (ASMLE)

Tokyo, Japan

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< Biography >

Mayuko WATANABE is an award winning journalist, a researcher, and an author

specialized in media literacy, gender and sexuality. Her research interest through

over 20 years of career including as a TV news reporter has been the regulatory policy of obscene expressions.

Not only taught media theories at several universities, she also worked on the Japanese Government to apply a concept of "Healthy Development of Youths" to its regulatory policy. She has served as a government committee member, and as a lecturer of Internet moral education for Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and also as a lecturer of human rights for Ministry of Justice.

Mayuko Watanabe has been proposing education and regulation through making speeches on the issue of Japanese sexual information and virtual child pornography including manga, anime and game for more than 15 years.

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Journal of Media and Human Rights 2023 Vol.1 No.1

-- Table of Contents --
Introduction
Why Virtual Child Pornography is a Problem
1. "Freedom of Expression" and Virtual Child Pornography
(1) Limits of Freedom of Expression
(2) Reality and scientific data on virtual child pornography
(3) The nature of the problem of virtual child pornography
2. Child Sexual Abuse and the Media
(1) Sexuality of children targeted
(2) Problems of depiction in sexual media
3. Criticisms against Japan from the International Community (1) World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
(2) Japanese Virtual Child Pornography Used for Sex Crimes in Other Countries
4. Research Objectives and Methodology
(1) Problem and research objectives
(2) Research questions
(3) Research Methodology

Japan Only G7 Country Where Virtual Child Pornography Not Regulated

< Current Research Interest >

 Media Literacy of Obscene Information among Youth in Japan

In late years, the young people in Japan tend to see obscene information more frequently by the flood of magazines, comics, and adult videos that handle obscene contents, and especially by the spread of the Internet.

While Japan is known as the country called "pornography superpower," parents and schools are not going to face the sex education directly. Therefore, the young people rely on the media as a textbook of sex.

Based on the result of her survey of male and female university students, she examines how the obscene information of such media is associated with youths’ behavioral and normative beliefs about having sexual intercourse, and harmful effects for their sexual communication.

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