Amazon Japan cooperating with police child porn investigation

TOKYO – Amazon Japan is “fully cooperating” with a police investigation into possible sales of child pornography, the local unit of Amazon.com said in an e-mailed statement.

Aichi prefectural police conducted raids on the Internet retailer’s Tokyo headquarters and a distribution centre in neighbouring Chiba prefecture on Friday (Jan 23), seeking evidence that Amazon Japan’s website may have been used by sellers to trade porn goods including photo books of underaged girls, Tokyo Shimbun reported, citing an unnamed official involved in the probe.

Amazon’s usage rules “prohibit the sale of any illegal products through the company’s website”, Amazon Japan said in the statement.

Photobooks and DVDs of scantily clad pre-pubescent girls – part of an “idol” industry that generated US$615 million (S$827 million) from bands, models and starlets in 2013 – were available in October at Japan’s three largest retail websites, Amazon Japan, Rakuten, and Yahoo Japan.

When Japan last year revised its laws to ban possession of child pornography, the wording left the so-called junior idol industry as a grey area. The probe of Amazon Japan may indicate police are now starting to crack down on mainstream retailers that have continued to carry the products. BLOOMBERG