"In my opinion, RapeLay's storyline went too far.
A spokeswoman would only say over the telephone that the Japanese government was aware that the games were a problem and it was checking to see if self-policing by the gaming industry was enough.Ī member of the Institute of Contents Culture, who did not want to give CNN his name, said restricting game themes limits freedom of expression. The office refused to make a statement on paper. But Japan's laws do not restrict the themes and ideas of the games.Ī national law that would make possession of real and virtual images of child porn illegal is under discussion, but no serious legislation has moved forward in Japan's parliament.ĬNN contacted the Gender Equality Promotion Division in the Gender Equality Bureau of Japan's Cabinet Office, which is charged with handling the hentai gaming issue.ĭespite repeated calls over a period of weeks, no representative from the government office would comment to CNN on camera. In games and videos, genitalia are obscured, even if it is animated. Japan does have censorship laws for sexual content. Now, once a game goes on sale in Tokyo, it is digitized and shared everywhere. But before the arrival of the Internet, such items stayed in Japan. This country has long produced products the rest of the world would call pornographic. Along the way, the player can rape a number of other girls and women. The object here is also revenge: Find and rape the woman who fired the player from his imaginary job. In minutes, we found a game similar to RapeLay. Step into a game shop in Akihabara, Japan's electronics district, and hentai games are readily available. Some of the games are violent - depicting rape, torture and bondage in detail. Those games are known as "hentai games." Almost all feature girlish-looking characters. But the governments do have a role in trying to regulate this sort of extreme pornography of children, both in their countries, and through the Internet ," she said, adding that they were calling for the Japanese government "to ban all games that promote and simulate sexual violence, sexual torture, stalking and rape against women and girls. "It's obviously very difficult to curtail activity on the Internet. What happened to RapeLay is an example, said Bien-Aime, of why Japan needs to police game makers. It is still readily available on dozens of Web sites, sometimes for free.
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"I think the idea that you can do it by wholesale banning is just never going to work anyway because we downloaded it for free off the Internet," Gardner said. That was how Lucy Kibble and Jim Gardner in Britain heard about it. "This was a game that had absolutely no place on the market," said Taina Bien-Aime of women's rights organization Equality Now which has campaigned for the game to be taken off the shelves.īut the controversy that led to stopping sales of the game instead took it viral. Taina Bien-Aime helped yank the game off store shelves worldwide. It is little wonder that the game, titled RapeLay, sparked international outrage from women's groups.
The reason behind your assault, explains the game, is that the teenage girl has accused you of molesting her on the train. The game allows you to even impregnate a girl and urge her to have an abortion.
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Then you can follow her aboard the train, assaulting her sister and her mother.Īs you continue to play, "friends" join in and in a series of graphic, interactive scenes, you can corner the women, rape them again and again. With the click of your mouse, you can grope her and lift her skirt. That is when you, the player, can choose your method of assault. She notices you are looking at her and asks, "Can I help you with something?"
Tokyo, Japan (CNN) - The game begins with a teenage girl on a subway platform.