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Tokyo official wants youth sex law
September 21, 2004
Tokyo - Parents in Tokyo would be legally responsible for keeping school-aged
children from having sex if the city's top law and order official gets his way.
The feasibility of such a step, proposed by Tokyo Vice Governor Yutaka
Takehana, will be one of the topics discussed when a panel of experts meets on
Wednesday to try to figure out how to deal with Japan's increasingly sexually
active youth.
Takehana, the city's first vice governor in charge of law and order, was quoted
by Kyodo news agency as saying that such a rule "would convey the determination
of adult society" to prevent youth sex, even if no penalties were imposed.
A Tokyo government official acknowledged that enforcing such a law would be
difficult. "If this sort of topic were to emerge at the meeting, we could not
ignore it," he said.
"Certainly enforcement would be difficult," he added. "I imagine that the idea
of a law will be vetoed."
The concerns behind the proposal are real, however.
The legal age of consent in Tokyo is 18.
Some 20 to 30 percent of Japanese 16-year-olds have had sex and nearly a
quarter of these have four or more partners, according to Masako Kihara, an
AIDS expert and associate professor at Kyoto University.
As a result, both AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases -- such as
chlamydia, which can cause infertility -- are on the rise among young people.
Of new HIV cases in 2003, at least 33 percent were in people under 29.
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Sexually
active schoolgirls say one swallow doesn't make a summer
8-13-2004
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