Erogs

Blogs are for everything. I'm actually quite surprised not to see a preponderance of Erogs here in the United States. They are extremely popular in Japan, which highlights the different morals in that country.

Japan laws allow obscene amounts of blood and violence in videos--things that would never pass censors in America. Also, the pornography industry in Japan is the biggest in the world outside the United States. However, even with the pervasiveness of sex and violence in Japanese culture, hardcore pornography is blurred in the genital areas.

Related to this culture is the emergence of a new use for blogs: Erotic blogs or Erogs. They are incredibly popular in Japan, which even hosts contests for the best run sites. On an erog, a person (usually a woman) discusses her feelings about sex, often with personal poetry, and erotic photos shot from her camera phone in various locations.

Which leads me to wonder about the crime rate in Japan. In America, violence in media is often quoted by conservatives as the reason for such high crime rates in the U.S. In Japan, despite such wanton violence in movies, prevalence of violent crimes are much lower than here. Are sex crimes different? Does the ease of finding sexual material in Japan correlate to a high rate of sex crimes? Are sex crimes as defined in America even defined the same in Japan (as in age when sex with a minor becomes pedophilia)? Or, is crime truly a cultural manifestation that owes its presence in America today to the nature of people who settle here rather than the stuff on the internet, video, tv, or radio?

I used to think media played a large role in our crime rate, but now I'm not so sure.