Photos of preteen girls in thongs now big business

Asuka Izumi was modeling for a DVD in July 2005 when the director asked her to put on a string bikini. She was just 12 years old. She agreed to pose in the sexy bathing suit and now, nearly two years later, that DVD is credited with starting the popularity of "T-back junior idols." Izumi, now 14, went on to pose in thong bikinis in four photo books and several DVDs. She looks back on that first time in a revealing bikini and said she had no reason not to do it. "It wasn't a big deal. The director asked me to do it, and I did it because I wanted to," [...]

From pornographic animation to raunchy dolls, Japan leads the world in eccentric products and media that sometime push the boundaries of what people consider to be decent - or even legal. This latest trend of preteen girls striking provocative poses in slinky bathing suits has some people questioning whether this is child pornography and if the parents are actually selling their children for sex. The large number of shops with Junior Idol and U-15 (Under 15) signs in Tokyo's Akihabara district, the country's subculture capital, is just one indication of how quickly the new market has grown. The controversial industry has been reluctant to reveal figures, but reports suggest that more than 3 million photo books were sold in the past year alone. Junior idol DVDs and photo books are commonly sold right next to hard-core pornography, and two years since Izumi's DVD, the models have grown even younger. Last month, 9-year-old Rei Asamizu appeared in "Melty Pudding," a photo book that includes shots of the little girl lying on a bed wet in a thong bikini. Although there is no full nudity, the scantily clad children are often pictured seductively blowing on the end of a flute or licking an ice cream cone.

Koji Maruta, the author of "Enko-shojo To Loli-con Otoko" ("Girls Who Sell Sex and Men with Lolita Complex" - a reference to Vladamir Nabokov's novel "Lolita" about pedophilia), said that unlike in the West, Japan has tended to be more open about sex and sex culture. "Japan has slowly been implementing legal measures against child pornography, but the ambience, culture and religion of the country makes people less uncomfortable about such issues compared with Western societies," said Maruta, who is also a lecturer in the international communications department at Okinawa University. [...] "Many in the industry feel that the junior idol boom was intended to be an underground trend," she said. "It was never meant to be accepted by the masses like it is now."

source: Article 'Photos of preteen girls in thongs now big business' by Jun Hongo; search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070503f1.html; 3 May 2007