Japan police seize 579,000 uncensored porn DVDs in raids. Meanwhile, on the internet …

Police in Tokyo have seized a record number of illegal uncensored pornographic DVDs after a series of raids across the Kabukicho red-light district of the city. The public, however, seems distinctly unimpressed.

Seventeen men have been arrested in the raids, in which 579,000 uncensored films were recovered from five adult shops and nearby storage facilities. Investigators told the Nikkan Sports newspaper that each store was earning around 12 million yen (US$107,000) a month in under-the-counter sales of movies that contravene Japan’s strict laws on what is acceptable pornographic viewing.

By law, performers’ genitalia and pubic hair must be obscured with computer-generated pixels before an adult movie can be sold in Japan. Despite vast amounts of free, unedited pornography available on the internet, explicit DVDs still command a premium here.

While authorities were quick to highlight the results of their campaign, internet chat sites have seen a steady stream of bewilderment over what most see as an archaic law that has long been by rendered irrelevant by technology.

One poster on the RocketNews24 website commented “Japan’s Tokyo vice police squad has nothing better to do than going after porn DVDs,” which generated the reply: “Somebody tell them about the internet.”

A poster on the Japan Today news site asked: “Who the heck watches porn on DVDs any more? Come on, there’s tonnes of uncensored porn on the net.”

Others were swift to point out the obvious double standards at play in Japanese laws that are designed to preserve public morals.