| Lolicon, or Roricon, is the Japanese
term for Lolita Complex, and refers to
older men's attraction to very young girls.
While it is certainly not a purely Japanese
phenomenon, the term comes after all from
Nabokov's novel, it seems to be particularly
widespread in Japan, with one survey in
Tokyo finding that 75% of high school
AND junior high school girls have experienced
sexual solicitation by middle-aged men.
Nothing symbolizes lolicon more than the
Japanese schoolgirl, in her sailor suit
uniform and short skirt, vast sections
of the sex and pornography industry are
devoted to satisfying lolicon. There is
even a subculture of women called Kogal
who continue to dress in school uniforms
even though they have already left school,
in some cases many years before. Japanese
women tend to explain lolicon by attributing
it to Japanese men's inability to deal
with the new generation of independent,
thinking women, but there is also an element
of the worship of the innocence of youth
in Japanese society that applies to both
sexes and results in a culture of "cute".
Whereas in western cultures teenage girls
are in a hurry to "grow up" and dress
and act as if they were older, in Japan
the opposite is true, with many women
in their twenties taking on the appearance
and mannerisms of teenage girls. There
is however a growing trend towards the
fetishization of pre-teen girls in ero-manga,
hentai, and hentai games. The consumers
for these products tend to be in their
twenties and belong to the group known
as otaku (nerds or geeks) and computer
stores and fairs are beginning to look
like porno stores. |