Prewar publication law. Wartime censorship. The postwar book-burning campaigns. Ordinances. Blanket designation. The nonexistent minor. Child-pornography law. In each period, manga as a medium has been named as something “dangerous” and made a target of regulation. The course of modern Japanese manga has been shaped by the push and pull of free development and continuous regulatory pressure.

The history of manga regulation surveys the historical development of regulation over Japanese manga, in all its forms (satirical cartoons, gekiga, boys’ and youth magazines, adult manga, and doujinshi), from the establishment of the modern publishing system in the Meiji period to the present. This article covers the chain of stages from prewar publication censorship through the early-postwar harmful-book campaign, youth-protection ordinances, the harmful-comic debate, the nonexistent-minor debate, and the child-pornography law revision debate. Structural analysis of the controversies is left to the article on the manga regulation debate; this article focuses on the chronological account.

Prewar: publication law and special-police censorship

Under the modern publishing system established in the Meiji period, manga, like other publications, was subject to censorship. Under the Publication Law of 1893, the Newspaper Law of 1909, and the comprehensive speech control of the 1925 Peace Preservation Law, satirical cartoons, gekiga, and adult erotic books were targets of regulation. Meiji satirists faced bans and fines for cartoons critical of the government, and early-Showa manga that handled political and social satire received repeated penalties. From 1937 onward, wartime control strengthened prior censorship by the Home and Army ministries; manga magazines suffered consolidation under paper shortages and publication limits, and only works of strong wartime-cooperation colour were permitted.

1945-1955: the Occupation and the reopening of expressive space

After the defeat, Occupation-period censorship (1945-1952) moved from prior to post-publication censorship in 1949. Occupation censorship mainly targeted political content (criticism of the Occupation, the emperor system, the atomic bomb), with limited direct regulation of sexual content. The early-postwar rental manga and kasutori magazines flourished against the lifting of wartime control. The rise of postwar story manga triggered by Tezuka Osamu’s New Treasure Island (1947), the gekiga movement, and the expansion of the rental-manga market formed the base of 1950s manga culture, while the underground circulation of kasutori magazines and shunga continued as the prehistory of adult erotic manga.

1955-1970: the harmful-book campaign and institutionalised youth protection

The 1955 “harmful-book campaign” was a mass movement led by mothers’ groups, PTAs, and educational bodies. Criticising the violent and sexual depictions of rental manga and boys’ magazines as “harmful books,” it pressed for burning and sales restraint, and exerted a strong chilling effect on the children’s-manga world. In 1964, Tokyo enacted the Ordinance on the Sound Upbringing of Youth, establishing a system of designating “unwholesome publications” and banning their sale to youth, the institutional foundation of the later harmful-comic and nonexistent-minor debates.

1970-1989: the establishment of youth and adult manga

Through the 1970s and 1980s, manga expanded from a children’s genre into youth and adult genres. Nagai Go’s Harenchi Gakuen (1968-1972), carrying sexual depiction in a boys’ magazine, drew criticism from PTAs and educational bodies and became a symbolic point of contention in manga-regulation debate. In the 1980s adult manga magazines were established as an independent genre, the prehistory of the present eromanga market, while the rise of the doujinshi market centred on Comiket (first held 1975) expanded an expressive space independent of commercial distribution.

1990-1992: the harmful-comic debate

The harmful-comic debate of the early 1990s is positioned as the starting point of present-day manga-regulation controversy. Triggered by a Wakayama PTA’s complaint, a chain of prefectural youth-ordinance revisions followed, and Tokyo introduced a blanket-designation method based on the quantity and degree of sexual and violent depiction. Manga artists, editors, and readers formed a group to defend the freedom of comic expression and held protest meetings and petition drives. The outcome was the industry’s establishment of self-regulation: “adult comic” marks, shrink-wrap packaging, and convenience-store display standards.

1999: the child-pornography law

In 1999, the Act on Punishment of Activities Relating to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography was enacted. It criminalised the production and provision of sexual records of real children but, at the outset, did not include manga, anime, or CG, a legislative judgement reflecting opposition from the publishing industry, authors, human-rights groups, and legal scholars. In the revisions of 2004 and 2014, the debate over including fictional works recurred, but the law was finally fixed without covering fictional works.

2010: the nonexistent-minor debate

In 2010, a revision bill for Tokyo’s youth ordinance included the concept of the “nonexistent minor,” provoking a large-scale debate. The initial bill targeted the sexual depiction of figures recognised as under eighteen by “judgement of age, dress, belongings, school year, background, and the situation,” extending the reach from protecting real children to regulating fictional works themselves. Strong opposition came from the publishing industry, manga artists, critics, and legal scholars, and noted authors expressed opposition. The initial bill was rejected in March; the June revision deleted the “nonexistent minor” wording and instead designated works that “unduly praise or exaggerate” sexual acts that violate criminal law or occur between close relatives barred from marriage. The revision passed in December and took full effect in July 2011.

2010s: the end of adult-magazine sales at convenience stores

From the late 2010s, the convenience-store chains successively decided to stop handling adult magazines. Seven-Eleven Japan, Lawson, and FamilyMart ended their handling at the end of August 2019. This was not direct legal regulation but corporate judgement, with the official reasons given as preserving the dignity of public space ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and consideration for inbound tourists. The adult-magazine distribution network contracted sharply with the convenience-store withdrawal, concentrating in bookshops, specialty stores, and online sales, a case of extra-legal self-regulation structurally reshaping the industry’s distribution.

2020s: AI generation and platform regulation

In the 2020s, the regulation of AI-generated images and adult content on distribution platforms became a new point of contention. Around 2020, credit-card companies such as Visa and Mastercard suspended payment for certain content on platforms such as Pornhub, and the Apple and Google app stores strengthened review of adult content, foreign-origin regulatory pressures affecting the Japanese market. Domestically, the 2022 AV protection law is positioned as a new regulatory framework for adult video, while in manga the core remains extra-legal self-regulation and industry ethics.

General features

Surveying the history, several structural features emerge. The agent of regulation has shifted over time from direct government control to municipal ordinances, industry self-regulation, and distribution constraints by market players. The rationale, centred on “youth protection,” has been justified by differing rhetoric in each period: “harmful books,” “unwholesome,” “nonexistent minor,” “public dignity.” And the opposition between regulation and freedom of expression has fostered a cross-cutting human network of publishers, authors, critics, and legal scholars that forms the subjective base of present-day debate over freedom of expression.

See also

• Obscenity
• Penal Code Article 175
• Eromanga
• Doujinshi
• AV protection law