The age bit here isn't a big deal. This just catches national law up to the already lower end of prefectural laws (all 16 to 18 I think). The bigger change is that the victim no longer needs to prove they physically fought back for it to be considered non-consentual.
I used to think the term “rape culture” was overblown, then I started reading shit like this. Absolutely disgusting. A victim has to physically fight back - putting them in greater danger and their lives at risk - AND they have to be able to prove it? How does a child prove they physically fought back even if they had the wherewithal to? Disgusting.
I respect Japan on a lot of things, but this was a whole area I was eagerly awaiting some societal change on. Still don’t know if new laws will actually result in changes to people’s behavior.
Like others have been saying, that was more of a technicality than a reality, as the actual age for every prefecture was already 16-18, with ages lower than 18 generally only being permissible in a legal marriage approved of by the parents (If I'm remembering right).
It's kind of like if in the US, the Federal age of consent was 13, but all 50 states and every territory had already raised it to 16 to 18, meaning the real age of consent was basically 18, it's just that congress was too lazy or distracting to update the federal law to what all the states and territories had already passed.
The fact that age of consent was 13 in a developed nation is a good reminder that as far as we've come, human kind as while still has a long way to go.
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