Censorship in Japan

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In Japan, Article 21 of the Japanese Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and prohibits formal censorship. What censorship does exist is often carried out through Article 175 of the Criminal Code of Japan. Historically the law has been interpreted in different ways - recently it has been interpreted to mean that all pornography must be at least partly censored; however, there have been very few arrests based on this law.^[1]

Whilst there is no official censorship of TV media, there has been some self-censorship by TV stations following a Pokémon episode that caused seizures in 1997. For example, following a murder incident in 2007, episodes of the anime School Days and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai ^[2] were canceled or delayed.