Involuntary Consent
The Illusion of Choice in Japan’s Adult Video Industry
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
The popularity of pornography is predicated on the idea that those participating have given their consent. That is what allows the porn industry to dominate the media economy today, generating staggering sums of money. Looking at behind-the-scenes negotiations and abuses in Japan's adult video industry, author Akiko Takeyama challenges this pervasive notion with the idea of "involuntary consent." This phenomenon, she argues, is ubiquitous, not only in the porn industry, but in our everyday lives. And yet modern society, built on beliefs of autonomy, free choice, and equality, renders it all but invisible.
Japan's AV industry alone generates a conservatively estimated $5 billion a year. In recent years, it has drawn public attention, and criticism, because of a series of arrests and trials of former talent agency owners and executives. This led to a report calling for a systematic investigation of the industry over the issue of "forced performance." This report has had ripple effects beyond Japan, as the US Department of State subsequently also cited forced performance as a human rights violation. Using this moment as an entry point, Takeyama argues that contract-making writ large is based on fundamentally dualistic terms, implying consent and pleasure on the one hand, and coercion and pain on the other. Because sex workers are employed on a contract basis, they fall outside of the purview of standard labor and employment laws. As a result, they are frequently pressured to comply with what production companies (mostly run by men) expect and often demand. In this ethnography of Japan's porn industry, Akiko Takeyama investigates the paradox of involuntary consent in modern liberal democratic societies. Taking consent as her starting point, Takeyama illustrates the nuances of contract making and the legal structures, or lack thereof, that govern Japan's adult video and sex entertainment industries.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Takeyama (Staged Seduction), a professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas, examines in this striking investigation the gray area between consent and coercion in Japan's pornography industry. Based on 18 months of fieldwork carried out between 2015 and 2018, Takeyama's ethnography sheds light on how financial pressures lead female performers to consent to exploitative working conditions. She places the rising numbers of young women in the industry in the context of Japan's Employment Ice Age, a period of labor deregulation from 1994 to 2004 when tens of thousands of college graduates accepted precarious contract work. The increasing supply of aspiring actors resulted in a buyers' market in which women competed against one another by accepting lower wages and performing more labor. Takeyama also discusses the knowledge gap between agents and directors, who are mostly male, and female performers, noting that women are usually offered unfair and inadequate compensation. Takeyama's prose is dense, but patient readers will be rewarded by her refreshing perspective, which picks apart simplistic notions of consent. It's a provocative and insightful addition to anti-porn vs. sex-positive feminist debates.
