LOLICON

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.