The debate over Article 175 of the Penal Code - with the historical background of the early 1960s

The debate over Article 175 of the Penal Code - with the historical background of the early 1960s

Article 175 of the Penal Code was enacted in the Meiji period (1868-1912) and has remained in force for a long time as a provision prohibiting the distribution of obscene documents and pictures. It remained in force even in the postwar democratic society, and its pros and cons became a major point of contention in the early 1970s. As urban culture expanded with rapid economic growth, freedom of expression expanded in areas such as movies, publishing, and entertainment, while the state attempted to tighten regulations under the guise of maintaining order. At that time, with the student movement and social unrest remaining, Article 175 was easily turned into a convenient tool for the authorities to suppress inconvenient expressions. Because the determination of obscenity was subjective and influenced by the prevailing trends of the times, the law was repeatedly arbitrarily applied, with similar expressions sometimes being caught and sometimes being overlooked. This instability
showed that the law had become a means of maintaining power rather than a universal norm. While the defense argued that the regulations were outdated and pointed out the danger of state control of expression, the prosecution justified their continued existence on the grounds of maintaining public order. In other words, the debate over Article 175 was not merely a question of sexual expression, but a political issue that symbolized the struggle between postwar democracy and state control, and reflected the contradictions of Japanese society in the 1960s.