Teh Grauniad wrote:Japan bans possession of child abuse images but law excludes anime
Child advocates say new statute is an improvement but are unhappy with exception for manga and video games
Japan's parliament has passed a law that bans possession of child abuse images, but it excludes sexually explicit depictions of children in comics, animation and computer graphics.
The upper house voted on Wednesday to approve the law, which was passed by the lower house earlier this month.
The law provides for prison terms of up to one year and fines of up to 1m yen ($9,800) for having sexually abusive photographs or videos of children. It allows a grace period of one year for people owning such materials to dispose of them.
The law was first proposed in May 2013 as an amendment to an earlier law that banned production and distribution of child abuse images but not ownership of such materials.
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