A man walks past advertisement of porn animation DVDs in front of a second-hand DVD shop in Tokyo on June 4, 2014/AFP
The upper house of parliament voted overwhelmingly for a bill revising laws under which only the production and distribution of child pornography had been banned.
The legislation cleared the lower house earlier this month.
Campaigners had long urged Japan to toughen its stance on child pornography, complaining it was a major source of the material for global markets.
The new legislation bans possession of photographs and videos depicting real children aged below 18, but it does not include drawings or digitally created imagery.
Now anyone who “possesses child pornography for the purpose of satisfying his/her sexual interest” faces imprisonment of up to one year or a fine of up to one million yen ($9,800).
In order to encourage disposal of material, the penalties will be delayed for one year after the revised law comes into effect, which could happen in July.
The new legislation has “an important message” for consumers of child porn, said Hiroshi Nakasatomi, associate professor of law at the University of Tokushima.
“In a sense child porn is supplied because there are buyers. Producers will be dealt a severe blow” with crackdowns on the buying side, he told AFP.
The law will also have an educational effect, showing younger generations what is considered good and bad in society, he said.
The ban excludes “manga” comics those aimed at adults as well as children, “anime” video and computer generated graphics, following calls to protect freedom of expression.
But Nakasatomi said the global trend was to ban drawings or so called two dimensional porn in addition to other forms.
It is “wrong to assume there are no victims” in paedophilic manga and anime since repeated exposure may encourage consumers to act out their fantasies, he said.
Japan was the only member of the G7 group of industrialised nations in which the possession of child porn remained legal. It is banned and subject to penalties in more than 70 countries.
Japan has a large pornography industry, and visitors to the country note the ubiquity of sexual imagery and the huge volume of material available.
While it is unusual to see people openly reading paedophilic manga in public, mainstream comics read by commuters sometimes contain sexualised images that many Westerners find unpalatable.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government last month banned sales to children of a manga depicting incestuous relationships.
“Little Sisters Paradise! 2”, which was published in April, has been classified as an “unhealthy publication” that must be kept out of children’s reach.
Despite calls for manga imagery to be included in the new rules, there was strong resistance from manga artists, free-speech advocates and publishers, who said it would impinge on freedom of expression and allow authorities to make arbitrary decisions about art.
Strong societal memories of strict state censorship in the run up to Japan’s disastrous entry into World War II play into such debates, with dissenters warning of the danger of allowing the government to control the press.
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