Jakarta –
Japan will increase the minimum age of consent or the legal age for sex from the previous 13 years to 16 years. This rule change was sparked by massive protests over the failure to protect children from sexual predators.
Quoted from The Japan Times, the legal age for sex in Japan has never changed since 1907. This is because the average life expectancy of Japanese people is less than 50 years.
The legal age in Japan for having sex is also relatively low among other countries such as:
- England and South Korea, 16 years
- Germany and China, 14 years
- France, 15 years
However, Japan is not the country with the lowest legal age in the world. According to the World Population Review, Angola and the Philippines recorded the lowest legal age of 12 years.
Under the current Criminal Code, children aged at least 13 years are considered capable of consenting or giving consent. This means that the sexual activity they engage in is not considered rape under the law.
There have been calls to raise the age limit to better reflect reality as the sexual exploitation of minors is a growing concern.
The criminal law subcommittee of the Legislative Council, which advises the minister of justice, is also seeking to create more specific definitions of crimes of forced sexual intercourse and indecent assault to make it easier to build cases for such crimes and support related charges in court.
Later, rules regarding sexual offenders will be added. Sexual offenders will be punished if they ‘make it difficult for the victim to form, express or fulfill an intention not to consent’, or take advantage of such a situation.
The Ministry of Justice also suggested extending the time limit for reporting rape from 10 to 15 years to give survivors more time.
The plan, this rule will be approved in mid-February. The government hopes to enact the revised Criminal Code during the parliamentary session until June 21.
Some of the things that this law highlights are sexual relations with children under 13 years old is illegal regardless of consent, while sexual relations with those aged 13 to 15 years will be punished if the age gap of the perpetrators is five years or older.
NEXT: A series of sexual crime cases, one of which is the case of a father who raped his own child
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